55-01.242.323 Davies & Harrigan: Cooperation and Coercion (T/P)

Instructors: Dr. Michael Oliva Cordoba

Event type: Introductory seminar

Displayed in timetable as:

Hours per week: 2

Credits: 3,0

Language of instruction: German

Min. | Max. participants: 5 | 30

Comments/contents:
What is the relationship between the political and the social? In 1972, the influential German constitutional law professor Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, judge (felt: chairman) at the Federal Constitutional Court from 1983 to 1996, stumbled across a legal demarcation that can be traced back to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke in political philosophy: 

Böckenförde lectured at the time at the Rhenish-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and Humanities on the "constitutional-theoretical distinction between state and society as a condition of individual freedom". In doing so, he touched on a sharp distinction that originated in Thomas Hobbes' main work Leviathan (1651): Hobbes there staked out two spheres: "The private sphere of impotence, in which citizens meet peacefully, having renounced their power, and the public sphere of omnipotence, which the Leviathan fills, preventing the relapse into war of all against all." (Oliva Córdoba 2020, 193f). 

Hobbesian freedom from the war of all against all enables (and even enforces) that all interaction among political equals remains voluntary and peaceful and thus beneficial for all participants. This is the sphere of the social. It is characterised by (horizontal) cooperation. On the other hand, the interaction between the trustees of the state's monopoly on coercion and the citizens is one between political equals. It is characterised by (vertical) coercion exercised towards the citizens. This is the sphere of the political, or more precisely: the sphere of the state.

Society and the state are thus characterised by cooperation and coercion. The ideal, well-organised community creates a (legal) order that separates the state sphere of coercion from the social sphere of cooperation and in this way guarantees individual freedom. (That, in my opinion, was what Böckenförde actually wanted to say.) The clarity of this demarcation has been squandered time and again. Even Böckenförde was ultimately not fully aware of it. The normal case is therefore a confusion of both spheres. This is all the easier because there are typically two ways of tackling socio-political challenges: Through co-operation or through coercion. The philosophical questions that arise are: How much can be achieved through coercion? And how much can be achieved through co-operation?

The social scientists Antony Davies and James Harrigan presented an interesting and highly readable study on this in 2020, which has unwittingly become an eminently philosophical book (even if it is very easy to read). They explore the limits of state coercion and the merits of social co-operation and consider them against philosophical challenges such as the problem of knowledge and the problem of unintended consequences. In this seminar, we will use their reflections to approach the relationship between the political and the social and in this way introduce the topics of applied social philosophy and contemporary applied political philosophy in a generally understandable way.

No special prior knowledge is expected. What is expected, however, is

• committed participation (including oral participation!),
  
• thorough preparation of the reading assigments
  
• weekly written answers to short questions on the previous session. The answers are to be presented in the seminar in turn (micro-presentation).
  

1. Please take note of the following information. Ignorance is NOT an excuse!
   
2. The self-registration procedure requires you to enter your examination registration in STiNE in the seventh week of the lecture period. WITHOUT this entry, admission to the examination is not possible. Please take care of this in good time.
   
3. It is also essential that you make individual arrangements before the end of the seventh week of lectures to determine the examination topic. Please make an appointment with me (via michael.oliva-cordoba@uni-hamburg.de) in good time for a consultation to discuss the examination topic. 
   
4. WITHOUT this consultation hour, admission to the examination is not possible. Your STiNE booking would be invalid, a meaningless database entry. Please make sure you organise the consultation hour in good time!
   
5. Admission to the examination is in any case subject to the cancelling condition of regular seminar attendance.