Most philosophy can only be understood as motivated reasoning in furtherance of political aims. Even something as seemingly neutral as the philosophy of the family has deep political implications.
The perennial problem for political elites is that there is no good justification for compulsory obedience to the State. Why should the masses do what their rulers tell them to do? Everyone ordered to pay taxes and obey State edicts asks themselves this question at some point. If the masses do not believe that they should obey, then the elites have to resort to forcing them with violence. This is hard, since the elites are always outnumbered by the masses. It is much easier for elites if the masses are convinced to obey by arguments.
This is where intellectuals like philosophers come in. The main role of intellectuals throughout history has been to provide persuasive arguments to justify power. This is ultimately why intellectuals are subsidised by the State. Their most important task is to convince the masses to obey their rulers. As long as intellectuals do this, their other activities are tolerated by the State. Only a very small group of anti-intellectual intellectuals have been skeptical or opposed to political power.
This means that even if a philosopher is making arguments about something like the nature of the family, a good default assumption is that he has a political agenda. That agenda is almost always to make arguments that imply that it is good to obey the political rulers he is obedient to.
One of the ways in which the masses can be persuaded of the legitimacy of political authority can is if they are indoctrinated as children. If children can be convinced that they owe obedience to the State during their most suggestible years, then the adults that they become will be obedient. What role would parents play in this process?
Interestingly, there are competing views about the best way to indoctrinate children into obedience to the State, especially regarding the role of parents. Although many philosophers have had the goal of justifying political rule to children, they have disagreed about how to treat parents within this goal.
- One school of thought sees parents as allies of State power that can usefully help to justify the authority of political order. This school is represented best by the philosophy of patriarchalism of the historical period of absolutist monarchies.
- Another school of thought sees parents as barriers to State power that should be overcome. This is best represented by the communist and leftist movements in their goal to abolish the family.
- A much smaller dissident school of thought is skeptical of State power and sees parents as subversive of political authority. Like the communists, this group sees parents as a barrier to State power but, unlike the communists, they view this as a positive. This is represented in some strains of classical liberalism and libertarianism.
In future posts I will discuss each of these schools of thought in more detail.