Why did every single culture organise themselves along more or less identical governing principles based around hereditary rulership?
Is monarchy human nature?
Why did every single culture organise themselves along more or less identical governing principles based around hereditary rulership?
It extends beyond human nature. It's mammal nature.
>In occasional political comments in his Parerga and Paralipomena and Manuscript Remains, Schopenhauer described himself as a proponent of limited government. Schopenhauer shared the view of Thomas Hobbes on the necessity of the state and state action to check the innate destructive tendencies of our species. He also defended the independence of the legislative, judicial and executive branches of power, and a monarch as an impartial element able to practise justice (in a practical and everyday sense, not a cosmological one).[68]
He declared that monarchy is "natural to man in almost the same way as it is to bees and ants, to cranes in flight, to wandering elephants, to wolves in a pack in search of prey, and to other animals".[69] Intellect in monarchies, he writes, always has "much better chances against stupidity, its implacable and ever-present foe, than it has in republics; but this is a great advantage."[69] On the other hand, Schopenhauer disparaged republicanism as being "as unnatural to man as it is unfavorable to higher intellectual life and thus to the arts and sciences".[70]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer#Politics
Monarchy is also chimp and other primate nature too. So is throwing poop. Think about that
>you breathe and monkey breathe, therefore you monkey
Amazing
all simians are monkeys, the same way all whales are dolphins.
it's just a convenient term that people use based on visuals, not actual heritage.
OP said hereditary rulership. Chimps do not pass on alpha status in a hereditary way, nor do any other animals I have ever heard of.
I don't think the hereditary part is a requirement, it's just a byproduct of rulers wanting to keep the power in the family. Old Germanic kingdoms were often elective and while the crown often passed from father to son this was not due to an intense desire of the voting nobles to keep the crown in the same family, it was a result of the king being able to leverage his power to get his son elected once he died or stepped down. Humans do however seem to have an intense desire to form hierarchies and have a leader at the top, even more so if our group have to deal with other groups.
It seems hereditary principles have always mattered in some form even if sometimes not reflected in the position of monarch. The king might be elected, but only from a pool of viable nobles with suitable bloodlines/ancestry.
>The king might be elected, but only from a pool of viable nobles with suitable bloodlines/ancestry.
The width of the pool implies that it's not hereditary, at least in my interpretation. A hereditary monarchy in my mind means that a son is passed the crown from his father, who in turn got it passed from his father and so on, with their direct lineage being the source of legitimacy and primary reason why they get the crown instead of other criteria like competency or diplomatic ties, whereas if you have a system where any noble can run (provided they are sufficiently powerful enough) then it's not really hereditary, you just have to be from the right social class.
Monarchies used to be elective too, it's often forgotten. In France, the 12 strongest dukes used to have the say on the next King, I believe Hugo Capet was the first proper king to establish a dynasty which passed on sovereignity by default.
https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pairie_de_France_(Ancien_R%C3%A9gime)
A fallen watcher seducing a daughter of man.
>Why did every single culture organise themselves along more or less identical governing principles based around hereditary rulership?
Have you literally never heard of Ancient Greece or Rome before.
So monarchies that became aristocracies based? Like
said, the same core hierarchical principles remained, it was just a matter of many noble families running the show rather than a single dynasty. Rome and Greece were nothing like modern Shartmerica if that's what you're trying to suggest.
They weren't hereditary in any sense. Roman Clans hadn't been politically relevant outside of their awards from the state at some point during the Early Republic and it was the case in Greece towards the end of the archaic period with families rising and falling in grace. That leaves you with at least with 5-600 years of contradiction to this principle. Then you could add the communes of Italy which emerged in the Middle Ages which lasted until the Early Modern period as varied states. Which would make Monarchy the exception rather than the norm in the region.
The path of Rome and Greece was monarchy > aristocracy > oligarchic pseudo-aristocracy
In all cases, notions of descent (whether from historical figures, dynasties or gods) still played a prominent role. Even if the political system had degenerated, the same hereditary principles continued to be regarded as desirable and aspirational.
>you just have to be from the right social class
...a class which was based around hereditary principles.
>...a class which was based around hereditary principles.
That doesn't make the title of king hereditary.
It's an evolutionary benefit so that you don't need to think about the survival of your which lets you focus on your own existence.
You're talking about rule by the strongest.
Chimps do not have monarchy you morons. They occupt different social status just like humans do and the roles are interchachable
Having a leader or alpha male is not the same as monarchy. Monarchy requires a religious element that other primates to not have. Monarchy arose in the bronze age at the same time priesthoods and agriculture appeared.
>Monarchy requires a religious element
oh is that the difference between monarchy and regular old hereditary autocracy?
>Monarchy arose in the bronze age at the same time priesthoods and agriculture appeared.
Source for this?
On a related note, are there any scholarly works on the origins of monarchy and early human government structure?
Monarchy doesn't require a religious element. It's just logical for someone with a whole lot of power to make sure their family holds onto that power for the sake of their children. Justifications can rise after that. Religion is one, but you could also argue for something like genetics or a philosophy that holds to the idea that a hereditary monarchy produces better rulers and provides greater stability do to people being raised to rule from birth.
>Why did every single culture organise themselves along more or less identical governing principles based around hereditary rulership?
Greater family. Gotta have a daddy.
Not monarchy specifically but some sort of centralization. Germanics and steppe guys elected chiefs or they scared everyone into being chief.
???
A warlord conquers a territory, makes the inhabitants his subjects by threat of force and then only cares about his family.
You think hunter gatherers or farming clans got together and said “alright, time to have a mega-landlord who owns us and all our land”
No. It happened a ton because that makes sense as a conqueror with people you’ve conquered.
>You think hunter gatherers or farming clans got together and said “alright, time to have a mega-landlord who owns us and all our land”
There's substantial evidence that primitive people had cults around their rulers and attached great significance to dynastic bloodlines.
5000 years ago:
https://www.qub.ac.uk/News/Allnews/2020/AncientDNARevealsInbreedingAmongtheDynasticEliteofNeolithicIreland.html
what make you thing that the conqueror dynamic didn't apply ?
>Why did every single culture organise themselves along more or less identical governing principles based around hereditary rulership?
they didn't, you don't monarchies, much less hereditary monarchies, in most tribal and/or nomadic pastorialist societies, with elder councils, clans and aristocracies being much more common as the governing body as monarchies, and even when figures with titles translated as 'king' appear they don't held the powers or exact position as the common European understanding of the term
Pretty much all forms of government have cropped naturally among humans and dependent on the environment and context, non being truly hardwired in the human nature
just look at the germanic thing for an example,
>elder councils, clans and aristocracies
Hereditary caste was at the centre of these.
If IKEA could only be run by a Kamprad it would be a hereditary company. If the CEO could be anyone as long as they fulfill a list of requirements it is not hereditary, even if the number of people who can meet those requirements is small and almost guarantees that a person comes from the upper class or at the very least upper-middle class. It becomes hereditary if the means of passing along the ownership explicitly is restricted to the family.
Many societies practice primogeniture when it comes to inheritance, and monarchy easily fits into that worldview.
Hereditary monarchies are actually pretty rare, most monarchies are like the Roman or Chinese emperors where leadership comes out of aristocratic bureaucracies. Even in the heady days of absolutism in Europe, governments would be perfectly willing to install a monarch from outside the royal line as long as they were deemed royal enough. Catherine the Great comes to mind, that time Bernadotte became king of Sweden, etc. You can also find elective monarchies all over, especially medieval Europe, Poland and Hungary come to mind.
I would say its a pretty far stretch to claim "every single culture" organized hereditary monarchy.
Too add on I think the better question OP might be why almost every society in the world practices inheritance, and that includes owners of nations. That might be something to do with human nature.
On a biological level, you want your offspring to have the greatest chance of success so you let them inherit what you have to prop them up better.
It's not human nature, it's simply nature.
Well I'm not a biologist but I don't think thats totally nature,some species have no contact with their offspring, others raise the offspring as part of a group like ants, I'm sure you could find plenty of examples without inheritance in nature. Also what would animals even inherit anyway? They don't often accumulate anything permanent.
marxist
Well I bet you could use examples from nature to support just about any political theory.
>Also what would animals even inherit anyway?
Wolf packs are just family units and they do control patches of territory
All societies, given time, trend towards aristocracy. Some aristocrat or another will inevitably attempt to and succeed in becoming an aristocrat among aristocrats. Additionally, due to the lack of education in past societies as a result of technological and economic factors, most people neither possessed the knowledge on how to run a state nor the notion that they were entitled to possess such power.