A Brief History of Ideology - Timeline
From the Middle Ages to the 20th Century
Middle Ages - 'The Great Chain of Being'
God (life and reason), Angels, Humanity, Animals, Plants, Matter, Nothingness
Reactionary - very conservative. Represented a divinely ordained, ordered system - with gradations of 'station' for human beings; leading to the idea of divine rights of kings.
Peasants Revolt - 1300s
Lead by Wat Tyler and John Ball
Renaissance - 1400s
It was the ability of human beings to be reborn and to show individual potential. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 led to the return and rediscovery of Ancient Greek/Roman ideas into Europe.
Erasmus
Da Vinci
Luther
His principle was "Ad Fontes" - to unleash human potential (humanist)
Lorenzo Ghiberti - "Man can make whatever he likes of himself"
The bible was originally in Hebrew and Greek but the Church converted it to Latin
The Reformation under Martin Luther split Christianity. He rejected anything not mentioned in the Bible. His 'protest' rejected the Pope, purgatory and other Catholic practices, starting the Protestant Reformation.
Cardinal Cajetan - "Erasmus laid the egg, which Luther hatched"
1523 ("The Knights War"), 1525 - German peasants rose up in rebellion ("The Peasants War" - The Battle of Frankenhausen) - Luther was appalled by the violence.
New leader of the peasants is Thomas Müntzer (regarded as proto-communist) - 1489 to 1525. On 15 May, The Battle of Frankenhausen killed six thousand rebels but barely a single soldiers. Müntzer fled, but was captured as he hid in a house in Frankenhausen. On 27 May, after torture and confession he was executed in Mülhausen. His head was displayed for years to come as a warning to others.
These rebellions showed the danger of too much change too soon.
Humanism
He had a deep engagement with the world inspired his compassion for people, animals and the environment.
He valued human dignity and education, while seeking humanity's natural place within the universe.
Desiderius Erasmus was a Dutch humanist and a great scholar of the northern Renaissance. He was the first editor of the New Testament and encouraged the growing urge for reform.
The "Renaissance" (rebirth) that followed was encouraged by the printing press, which spread knowledge to a degree not sign again until the birth of the Internet.
He applied his intellect to ancient Biblical texts to challenge established orthodoxies in the Catholic Church.
16th/17th Century
Thomas Hobbes
John Calvin
Conservative, need for an authoritarian government, need for religion.
Progressive, need an authoritarian government, an atheist but also a monarchist - no need for supernatural figures, "human nature is essentially selfish and violent', the man of the people. He lived during the time of Charles I, the ultimate proponent of Divine Right.
They replace the idea of 'aristocracy' with 'meritocracy' of the mind: Godliness/Intelligence
Calvin in Geneva, in the second wave of the Protestant Reformation, reigned in the "Popular" Reformation and imposed a rigorous "Magisterial" Reformation that stressed order and discipline.
This provoked a backlash against his rule, with an opposition group called "The Libertines". They would yawn loudly and fart during his compulsory Sunday sermons...
He described the typical lifespan of humans as being "nasty, brutish and short".
In his classic work 'Leviathan', he justified the rule of an 'Enlightened Despot".
17th/18th Century
Oliver Cromwell (with religion): English revolutionary (Puritan) shared Calvin'sview of human nature. He reached the conclusion that nobody could therefore claim superiority over anyone else. 'Englightenment' philosophers had a much more positive view of human nature.
Pushing things forward by rejecting monarch in favor of Republicanism.
Napoleon (with reason): "monarchs are not necessary to preserve stability" - communism
Quotes from Enlightenment philosophers:
"Man will never be free till the last King is strangled with the entrails of the last priest" = Diderot
“The idea of a hereditary ruler is as absurd as the idea of a hereditary mathematician” = Thomas Paine
“Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains” = Rousseau
Republicanism Triumphant?
Edmund Burke
Tom Paine
View that the French Revolution would unleash barbarous nature of man as per Hobbes/Leviathan.
More positively by Paine as per the Enlightenment revolutionaries.
Competitive not co-operative
Getting rid of monarchy
Ideas of Napoleon - manifest for human beings working together for a better future. Very left-wing ideology.
19th century - Nationalism and Empire
19th Century = growth of empires, industry, national rivalries, competition and capitalism
Gladstone
Liberal (a reformer), gave home rule to Ireland, low church ('protestant'), Republican heritage, democratic - like Paine.
Disraeli
Conservative (change in order to preserve), high church ('catholic'), Royalist heritage, on the 'right' = traditional, moderate - like Burke
Hegel
Marx
German sociologist: developed the theory of 'Dialectic' - the concept that intellectual developments too place when one way of seeing the world (a thesis) clashes with a fresh way (an antithesis), thereby producing a 'synthesis)
Marx took the clash of IDEAS and applied it to SOCIETIES - it was socio-economic conditions that produced fresh ideas and perspectives (the clash of classes).
The feudal aristocracy clashes with the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie clashes with the proletariat (the working class).
Essential idea that the workers of the world unite to overthrow figures of oppression. When this was finished, communism would be the end result and the state would 'wither away' altogether.
The 20th Century - WWI
Russian, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and German empires collapse.
Lenin in Russia
Lenin was interested in practical application. His idea was 'hothousing' a revolution in a backward peasant state.
The first regime set up in the name of Marxism was the Soviet Union following the October Revolution of 1917.
The response to the Marxist Leninist threat
Facism emerged from socialism and communism
Fascism is a totalitarian system based on order, tradition and nationalism
Fascism is different to Nazism (which had 'Mein Kampf') and Communism (which had 'The Communist Manifesto'
The extreme left - anarchism
Mikhail Bakunin was concerned of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'. He had the belief that any group of revolutionaries seizing control of the state would quickly become corrupted by the power it bestowed upon them
For Bakunin, the way forward was to smash the state and resist all attempts at any form of centralization.
Acted as an inspiration behind the anarchist experiment in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War.
The center = Keynsianism, Welfarism and Consenus Politics
Keynes
New way of organizing the economy - the concept of 'spending your way out of a Depression' through international loans
A huge increase in the power of the state = money into public works projects
Left-wing approach used by Roosevelt (democrat) in the USA
Attlee (labor party) - UK. His government established the welfare State.
'New Right' under Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980s.
In the era of Trump and Brexit, politics is shifting to the right...