My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) by the former slave Frederick Douglass was the second of his three autobiographies and the one that contained his most radical ideas. In this episode David explores how Douglass used his life story not only to expose the horror of slavery but to champion a new approach to abolishing it. The name for this approach: politics.

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Going deeper.....

• David Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (2018)
• Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (1997)
• Colum McCann, TransAtlantic (2013)
• (Audio): Jamelle Bouie, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Rebecca Onion, 'Who Should Tell the Story of American Slavery?' (2015) 

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Jeremy Bentham’s Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation is a definitive early statement of the basis of utilitarianism: how do we achieve the greatest happiness of the greatest number? David looks at Bentham’s rationale for this approach and the many criticisms it has faced. Bentham has often been accused of reducing politics to mechanical calculation and missing what really matters. But given the time in which he was writing, wasn’t the prioritisation of pleasure the most radical idea of all?

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Going deeper…

• Philip Lucas and Anne Sheeran, ‘Asperger’s Syndrome and the Eccentricity and Genius of Jeremy Bentham’ (2006)
• Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (1975)
• Thomas McMullan, ‘What does the panopticon mean in the age of digital surveillance?’, The Guardian (2015)
• (Audio) In Our Time, Utilitarianism

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality (also known as the Second Discourse) tells the story of all human history to answer one simple question: how did we end up in such an unequal world? David explores the steps Rousseau traces in the fall of humankind and asks whether this is a radical alternative to the vision offered by Hobbes or just a variant on it. Is Rousseau really such a nice philosopher?

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Going deeper…

• Leo Damrosch, Jean Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius (2005)
• David Edmonds and John Eidinow, Rousseau’s Dog (2007)
• Pankaj Mishra, ‘How Rousseau predicted Trump’, The New Yorker (2016)
• (Audio) In Our Time, The Social Contract

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We got lots and lots of excellent questions from listeners about the themes and ideas in this series of talks. In this extra episode

David will do his best to answer some of them, from Hobbes to Weber, and from Gandhi to feminism. Plus he talks about what's missing from this series and where we might start next time.

Go to https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/history-of-ideas for the full collection of reading lists.

Quentin Skinner on the state:

(Video) Quentin Skinner, ‘What is the state? The question that will not go away’

Orwell on Gandhi:

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/reflections-on-gandhi/

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Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History (1992) became associated with the triumph of liberal democracy at the end of the twentieth century. But was Fukuyama really a triumphalist? David explores what Fukuyama had to say about the strengths and weaknesses of liberal democracy and asks whether his analysis still holds true today. What have we learned about the modern state from its history? And can it, and we, really change now?

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/133/13399/the-end-of-history-and-the-last-man/9780241960240.html

Going Deeper:

• Paul Hirst for the LRB on ‘Endism’
• Fukuyama at the 2020 Munich Security Conference
• Fukuyama on the 2016 presidential election
• Louis Menand, ‘Francis Fukuyama Postpones the End of History,’ The New Yorker.
• Talking Politics with Fukuyama 

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Catharine MacKinnon’s Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (1989) challenges two dominant ways of thinking about politics: liberalism, which wants to protect us from the power of the state, and Marxism, which wants to liberate us through the power of the state. What if neither is good enough to emancipate women? Mackinnon explains why patriarchal power permeates all forms of modern politics. David

discusses what she thinks we can do about it.

Recommended version to purchase: 

• Catharine A. MacKinnon, Toward a feminist theory of the state (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).
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Going Deeper:

• Lorna Finlayson in the LRB on Catharine MacKinnon, feminism, and the law
• Catharine A. MacKinnon, Sexual harassment of working women: a case of sex discrimination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979).
• Drucilla Cornell, ‘Sexual difference, the feminine, and equivalency: a critique of MacKinnon’s Toward a feminist theory of the state’, Yale Law Journal, vol. 100, no. 7, article 12.
• The NYTimes on Catharine MacKinnon and sexual harassment
• Catharine Mackinnon for The Atlantic on #MeToo

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Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist who both experienced and analysed the impact of colonial violence. In The Wretched of the Earth (1961) he developed an account of politics that sought to channel violent resistance to colonialism as a force for change. It is a deliberately shocking book. David explores what Fanon’s argument says about the possibility of moving beyond the power of the modern state.

Free online version of the text:

• http://abahlali.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Frantz-Fanon-The-Wretched-of-the-Earth-1965.pdf

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/573/57385/the-wretched-of-the-earth/9780141186542.html

Going Deeper:

• Megan Vaughan for the LRB on Fanon and psychiatry in North Africa
• Frantz Fanon, Toward the African revolution: political essays
• Frantz Fanon, Black skin, white masks (New York, NY: Grove Press, 2008).
• (Video) Gillo Pontecorvo, The Battle of Algiers [film] (1966)
• Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Preface’, in Frantz Fanon, The wretched of the earth (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 2001)
• Alice Cherki, Frantz Fanon: a portrait, Nadia Benabid, trans. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006).

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Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition (1958) is a remarkably prophetic book. At its heart is an analysis of the relationship between labour, work and action, set against a time of rapid technological change. Arendt worried about the power of computers, believed in the capacity of people to reinvent themselves through politics and despaired of the influence of Thomas Hobbes. Was she right?

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo29137972.html

Going Deeper:

• James Miller in the LRB on Hannah Arendt
• Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
• Hannah Arendt, Eichman in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
• In Our Time on Hannah Arendt
• Matthew Beard for the Guardian, ‘With Robots, is a life without work one we’d want to live?’ 

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Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1944) was written during the Second World War but Hayek was really worried about what would come next. He feared that wartime planning would spill over into the peacetime economy and destroy hard won freedoms. David explores where Hayek’s fears came from and asks why he worried that democracy would only make the problem worse. He also considers what makes Hayek such a politically influential and divisive figure to this day.

Free online version of the text:

• https://archive.org/details/TheRoadToSerfdom/page/n7/mode/2up

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-road-to-serfdom/f-a-hayek/9780415253895

Going Deeper: 

• Geoffrey Hawthorn on Hayek and his overcoat for the LRB 
• F.A. Hayek, ‘Individualism: True and False’ 
• Andrew Gamble, Hayek: The iron cage of liberty (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996)
• Stephen Metcalf in The Guardian, ‘Neoliberalism: The Idea that Swallowed the World’ 
• Hayek vs. Keynes
• Matt Ridley, The rational optimist: how prosperity evolves (London: Fourth Estate 2011)

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Max Weber’s The Profession and Vocation of Politics (1919) was a lecture that became one of the defining texts of twentieth century political thought. In it, Weber explores the perils and paradoxes of leadership in a modern state. Is it possible to do bad in order to do good? Can violence ever be virtuous? Does political responsibility send politicians mad? David discusses the legacy of Weber’s ideas and asks: who is the true Weberian politician?

Free online version of the text:

•  http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/class%20readings/weber/politicsasavocation.pdf

Recommended version to purchase: 

• https://www.amazon.co.uk/Weber-Political-Writings-Cambridge-History/dp/0521397197

Going Deeper:

• Geoffrey Hawthorn on Max Weber for the LRB
• Joachim Radkau, Max Weber (Polity, 2009)
• Talking Politics on ‘Politics as a Vocation’ with Jonathan Powell
• Jan-Werner Müller, Contesting democracy: political ideas in twentieth century Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013)
• David for the LRB on Weber, Tony Blair, and the politics of good intentions

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