Unit 1 - Task 11 - the one trying to pack a whole semester module in Politics into one class debate.

"Following up on Javier's podcast on the difficulties of matching individual morals with societal ethics, I have decided to have a debate next Friday on this very topic, with two broad points of view: that the values of the many should take precedence, or viceversa, with all the nuances in between. As a starting point, I have linked to two videos about the relationship of individuals vs society (in the previous folder) that you should watch and make some notes on (send me the notes through here). I also expect you to do some research beyond those videos for arguments for and against these two points of view, for the debate."

The two starting point videos are:

Reasoning about Escape: Plato's Crito Summary

Thoreau and Civil Disobedience

There are whole courses in Sociology, Politics and Philosophy devoted to this debate: What are the limits between the Individual and State?

And of course, there is no answer ... well, rather, there are many answers but none of them are perfect. All the answers, when reduced to an absurd level, simply fall apart. So it just becomes a game of finding the "least worst answer".

But first, what is an Individual? What is a State?

There are multiple definitions of an Individual with philosophers throughout history dealing with the concept. For the purposes of this discussion I am going to accept this definition: an individual is an adult human being capable of accounting for their own decisions and actions, with an inherent right to their own life.

Society at its simplest is just a group of individuals, but we know it to be more than just that. Not only does the group usually share some land, some social territory, but also they share some dominant cultural values and expectations, along with patterns of relationships among its members. At some point an unwritten social contract appears.

When the social contract becomes complex enough, a system of organisation appears and then in time it evolves into what we could call a State. It is worth noting that there are plenty of definitions of what exactly a State is and depending on ideology some definitions will be more or less appealing to the reader.

Most humans exist under some sort of State, and have been doing so for thousands of years since the development of agriculture. Nowadays the most common form of State is the Nation State or Country.

Things get rather complicated now. 

The relationship between the Individual and the State is akin to the relationship between a master and a servant. But who is the master and who is the servant?

The individuals give up on some rights (most notably the right to legitimate violence) and in return get some rights (notably again, the right to vote).

In a modern democratic state it is assumed that the State derives its legitimacy from the fundamental rights of Individuals. Those fundamental rights are not transferred to the State.

Freedom of Speech is one of those (not so common) fundamental rights, with it comes the right to disagree and the right to oppose. And in a way, the State must defend and uphold those individual rights.

Without those necessary fundamental rights there cannot be any improvements in society.

Of course no system is perfect, and we can just find examples everywhere on the news on a daily basis.

In my presentation the other day, I concluded that, in my view, civil servants had no right to disagree with the law. I must now make clear that it is still my view that a civil servant, while discharging hers or his civil servant duties, cannot have the right to opt out of the law. But, they do have the right to forego their job as a civil servant of the State and then oppose the law from the other side of the aisle.