Nature and Scope of Political Philosophy

Habermas and the Public Sphere: Its Contribution to Participatory Democracy

Introduction

Jürgen Habermas, the leading second-generation Frankfurt School thinker, developed the concept of the public sphere (Öffentlichkeit) most fully in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962). For Habermas, the public sphere is a realm of social life in which private individuals come together as a public to discuss matters of common concern, and in doing so form public opinion. It is neither the state nor the market but a mediating space between them. This essay explains how such a public sphere strengthens participatory democracy, and then notes its limits.

Meaning of the Public Sphere

Habermas defines the public sphere as "a domain of our social life in which such a thing as public opinion can be formed." Its key features are:

• Openness: it is in principle accessible to all citizens, not restricted by class, status or office.
• Rational-critical debate: participants set aside their private interests and status and argue on the basis of reasons, aiming at mutual understanding rather than strategic victory.
• Autonomy: it is independent of state coercion and commercial pressure.
• Communicative action: interaction oriented to reaching understanding, governed by validity claims of truth, rightness and sincerity.

Habermas traces its historical emergence to the eighteenth-century bourgeois coffee houses, salons and print culture of England, France and Germany, where private persons debated literature and then politics, producing a "public opinion" that could be set against absolutist authority.

How the Public Sphere Strengthens Participatory Democracy

1. It creates a space for citizen participation beyond voting. Participatory democracy requires citizens to do more than cast a ballot periodically. The public sphere provides an ongoing arena — assemblies, media, associations, online forums — in which citizens continuously engage in deliberation on public issues. Participation thus becomes a daily practice rather than an episodic act.

2. It generates communicative power that can check the state. For Habermas, "communicative power" produced through reasoned public debate is converted into "administrative power" through law. Public opinion acts as a counterweight to the bureaucratic and economic systems, forcing the state to justify its decisions. This constrains arbitrary rule and makes governance responsive to citizens.

3. It legitimizes democratic decisions. Decisions are legitimate, in Habermas's discourse theory, only when they could be accepted by all those affected as participants in rational discourse. The public sphere supplies this legitimacy by subjecting policies to open scrutiny. Participation therefore becomes meaningful because it actually shapes and authorises collective decisions.

4. It promotes rational will-formation and the general interest. By forcing citizens to give reasons and to consider others' viewpoints, the public sphere transforms raw preferences into considered judgments. This "discursive will-formation" helps produce a general interest rather than a mere aggregation of private interests — the heart of participatory democracy.

5. It builds civic competence and political culture. Participation in public debate educates citizens, develops their civic virtues, and creates a politically informed and active citizenry. This is both a precondition and a product of participatory democracy.

6. It ensures inclusiveness and the "ideal speech situation." Habermas's ideal speech situation requires that all affected parties have equal opportunity to speak, question and challenge, free from coercion. To the extent the public sphere approximates this, it gives voice to the marginalized and makes democracy genuinely participatory rather than elitist.

7. It mediates between the "lifeworld" and the system. The public sphere is where the communicative rationality of the lifeworld — everyday life, culture, family, civil society — is brought to bear on the money- and power-driven systems of the market and the state. It is the channel through which citizens' concerns reach decision-makers.

Limitations and Critical Assessment

Habermas himself notes the "refeudalization" of the public sphere: mass media, advertising and corporate interests turn citizens from active participants into passive consumers. Critics add that his model is too rationalist, ignores emotions and rhetoric, and historically excluded women and the working class. Thinkers like Nancy Fraser argue for multiple, counter-publics rather than one bourgeois public sphere. Nonetheless, the normative ideal remains a powerful standard for judging actually existing democracies.

Conclusion

For Habermas, the public sphere strengthens participatory democracy by providing an open, autonomous and reasoned arena in which citizens deliberate on common concerns, generate communicative power, legitimize decisions, and develop civic competence. It converts private individuals into an active public capable of holding the state accountable. Though distorted by media and market forces, the public sphere remains the essential medium through which participatory democracy becomes possible — as Habermas puts it, it is the "communication structure of the democratic will-formation."

Dialectical materialism is the philosophical method and worldview developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, building critically on Hegel's dialectic and on the materialism of Feuerbach. It holds that the material world exists independently of mind, that matter is primary and consciousness secondary, and that this world develops not mechanically but through internal contradictions and struggle. It is both a theory of reality (ontology) and a method of studying society, history and thought.

Core principles

1. Primacy of matter. Matter is the fundamental reality; ideas, laws, religion and the state are products of material conditions. "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but their social being that determines their consciousness" (Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859).

2. Dialectical motion, not static being. Everything is in constant movement, change and interconnection. Engels in Dialectics of Nature identified three principal laws:

   • Unity and struggle of opposites — every thing contains contradictory tendencies whose conflict drives change.
   • Transformation of quantity into quality — gradual quantitative accumulation produces sudden qualitative leaps.
   • Negation of the negation — development proceeds in a spiral, each stage negating the previous one while preserving something of it.

3. Contradiction as the engine of development. Change is not imposed from outside but arises from internal contradiction. In society the central contradiction is between the forces of production and the relations of production.

4. Practice as the test of truth. Marx's Theses on Feuerbach (1845): "Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it." Theory is validated through revolutionary practice, not contemplation alone.

5. Historical materialism as its application. Dialectical materialism applied to society yields historical materialism: modes of production (primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism) succeed one another as class contradictions sharpen.

Illustrations

• Water and its states. Heating water gradually raises temperature (quantitative change); at 100 °C it abruptly becomes steam (qualitative leap). Cooling to 0 °C turns it to ice. The same substance, different qualities — a textbook example of quantity into quality.

• Seed and plant. A seed is negated by the plant that grows from it; the plant is negated by the fruit that produces new seeds. The new seed resembles the old but is multiplied — the negation of the negation in spiral form.

• Capitalism. The bourgeoisie and proletariat are interdependent yet opposed; this unity of opposites produces class struggle. Accumulated exploitation (quantity) erupts into revolution (quality), as in the Russian Revolution of 1917.

• Nepali context. Feudal land relations in the nineteenth century produced peasant revolts; the 1951 overthrow of the Rana regime and the 2006 Jana Andolan illustrate how accumulated grievances cross a threshold into systemic change. Similarly, caste and gender contradictions within Nepali society push ongoing social transformation.

Criticism and relevance

Critics (Popper, Sartre, Western Marxists) argue that dialectical laws are unfalsifiable and that Engels illegitimately extended dialectics from society to nature. Yet the method remains valuable: it insists on seeing phenomena historically, in their interconnections, and in terms of the contradictions that generate change — an approach still used in political economy, development studies and the analysis of class, caste and gender in Nepal.

Conclusion

Dialectical materialism is thus a materialist ontology plus a dialectical method: matter is primary, and matter develops through contradiction. Its strength lies in uniting explanation with practice — understanding the world in order to change it.

Plato's ideal state, set out mainly in The Republic, rests on specialization of functions: each person should do the one work for which nature has fitted him, and the highest work, ruling, must go to those best fitted by nature and training. The philosopher-ruler is therefore not elected, not chosen by birth or wealth, and not picked by lot. He is selected through a long, graded, state-controlled process of education and testing that begins in childhood and ends in middle age. Plato's central claim is that "until philosophers are kings, or kings have the spirit and power of philosophy... states will never have rest from their evils" (Republic, V, 473c–d).

1. Principle of selection: nature plus nurture

Souls are said to contain gold (rulers), silver (auxiliaries) or bronze/iron (producers). This is not a closed caste system: a child of golden nature born among the producers must be promoted, and a base child born among the guardians demoted. Selection is meritocratic and open. Nature supplies capacity, education (paideia) develops it, and testing verifies it.

2. Stage one: elementary education (birth to about 20)

Children receive gymnastics for the body and music (poetry, stories, harmony) for the soul, carefully censored so that they absorb right ideas of the gods and of courage. The state watches who shows quick learning, memory, endurance and love of truth. Those who do not are directed to the producing or auxiliary classes. This is the first sieve.

3. Stage two: mathematical sciences (about 20 to 30)

The selected study arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and harmonics, not for utility but to turn the mind from the world of becoming to the world of being. At about 30 a second selection is made. Those with the greatest aptitude proceed; the rest become auxiliaries and administrators.

4. Stage three: dialectic (about 30 to 35)

For five years the remaining students study dialectic, the method of reasoning by question and argument up to the Forms, above all the Form of the Good. Plato warns that dialectic must come late, since the young misuse argument for sport.

5. Stage four: practical service (about 35 to 50)

The students are then sent back "into the cave" for fifteen years to hold military and civil office. They are tested against the temptations of power, pleasure and fear to see whether they stay just and unmoved by office, wealth and honour. This is the practical examination of character.

6. Stage five: vision of the Good (about 50)

Those who have proved best in learning, war and office are at about fifty brought to the final goal. They lift the eye of the soul to the Good itself and use it as a pattern for ordering the state and their own lives. They spend most of their time in philosophy but take turns ruling, as a duty and not as a prize. These are the philosopher-rulers, the perfect guardians.

7. Why not other methods

Plato rejects:

• election by the many, since they follow rhetoric and opinion (doxa) rather than knowledge (episteme);
• selection by lot, which ignores natural fitness;
• hereditary succession, which confuses birth with merit;
• rule by wealth or force, which are not virtues of the soul.

For Plato, ruling is a craft (techne) needing expert knowledge, like navigation or medicine. Passengers do not vote on how to sail the ship, so the uneducated should not decide who rules.

8. Who selects

The existing philosopher-rulers design the curriculum, set the tests and decide who advances. Plato argues they will not abuse this power because, having seen the Good, they do not crave power for its own sake.

Conclusion

In Plato's ideal state the philosopher-ruler is selected neither by birth nor by ballot but by a lifelong, state-run system of education and graduated testing: musical and physical, mathematical, dialectical and practical, culminating at about fifty in the vision of the Good. The criterion is knowledge of the Good combined with proven virtue. Critics call the scheme elitist and say it gives unaccountable power to a few, but for Plato it is the only arrangement in which rule rests on knowledge rather than opinion.

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1658) is the classic theorist of absolute sovereignty. In Leviathan (1651) he argues that the only way to escape the misery of the state of nature is to establish a single, unlimited, undivided sovereign power. He justifies this absolutism through a chain of connected arguments.

1. The state of nature as a war of all against all Hobbes begins with a thought experiment: imagine human beings without any common authority. In this condition there is no law, no property, no justice — only the natural equality of persons and their competing desires. From this he derives three causes of quarrel: competition, diffidence (fear), and glory. The result is a "war of every man against every man," in which "the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Fear of violent death is the supreme evil, and the natural right of self-preservation drives every person.

2. The laws of nature and the need for a sovereign Reason discovers the laws of nature — the first being to seek peace. But laws of nature are only "inclinations" and cannot by themselves secure peace, because without a "common power to keep them all in awe," covenants are mere words. Hobbes's key claim is that covenants without the sword are but words. Therefore a coercive power is necessary to make obligation effective.

3. The social contract and authorization Individuals mutually covenant to transfer their natural rights to a sovereign, on condition that everyone else does the same. The sovereign is not a party to the contract; he is the author whose actions are authorized by the subjects. Since every subject has authorized the sovereign's acts, every act of the sovereign is, in effect, an act of the subject himself. Rebellion is therefore logically inconsistent — you cannot complain of an injury done by yourself.

4. The sovereign must be absolute and undivided Hobbes gives several reasons why the sovereign's power cannot be limited or shared:

• No division of sovereignty: Divided powers (e.g., king and parliament) produce civil war, as in England. Sovereignty must be indivisible.
• No right of resistance: If subjects could judge the sovereign's commands, they would be judges in their own cause, returning society to the state of nature.
• Control of doctrine and opinion: The sovereign alone decides what opinions may be publicly taught, since disagreement over religion and politics is a main cause of disorder.
• Unity of legislative, executive, and judicial power: All must reside in one person or assembly.

5. The scope of obedience Hobbes does allow one limit: the subject may resist if the sovereign commands him to kill or wound himself, since no man can be obliged to his own destruction. But this is a narrow exception; otherwise obedience is unconditional. The sovereign's power is like the biblical Leviathan — a "mortal god" to whom we owe peace and protection in exchange for submission.

6. The underlying logic: protection and obedience The whole justification rests on reciprocity: the sovereign's duty is to provide protection and security; in return, subjects owe obedience. Since only an absolute, undivided power can guarantee protection, absolutism is rationally required. Hobbes thus justifies absolutism not by divine right but by rational consent — the fear-driven, interest-based agreement of rational individuals.

Conclusion Hobbes justifies the absolutist ruler by showing that the state of nature is intolerable, that covenants without coercive power are void, and that only a single, unlimited, undivided sovereign — authorized by the people but not bound by them — can secure peace. His argument is a powerful early statement of sovereignty as the foundation of political order, though critics note that it leaves almost no room for liberty or accountability.

John Rawls (1921–2002), in A Theory of Justice (1971), argues that justice is the "first virtue of social institutions" and that a just society is one whose basic structure distributes social values — liberty, rights, opportunities, income, wealth, and the bases of self-respect — in a fair way. His central claim is that fairness in distribution cannot be judged by looking at the actual outcomes people enjoy, because those outcomes are contaminated by morally arbitrary factors such as birth, caste, class, talent, and luck. To identify genuinely just principles of distribution, Rawls therefore constructs a hypothetical thought experiment — the original position — in which the parties choose principles of justice behind a veil of ignorance. The argument proceeds as follows.

1. The original position as a device of representation. Rawls asks us to imagine rational, mutually disinterested persons assembled to agree on the basic principles that will govern their society. This is not a historical state of nature (unlike Hobbes or Locke); it is a hypothetical, purely procedural device. Its purpose is to model the idea that principles of justice must be chosen under conditions that are fair to everyone — hence "justice as fairness." The original position is fair because it strips away the bargaining advantages that unequal social circumstances ordinarily give some people over others.

2. The veil of ignorance. Behind the veil, the parties do not know:

• their place in society — class, caste, gender, race, or social status;
• their natural talents, intelligence, strength, or conception of the good;
• their life plan, psychological dispositions, or conception of what makes life valuable;
• the particular circumstances of their society — its economic condition, political culture, or level of development;
• which generation they belong to.

They do know general facts — the laws of economics, psychology, and sociology, and the basic principles of human motivation — but not how those facts apply to their own case. The veil thus ensures that no one can tailor principles to favour their own position, because no one knows what position they will occupy. The choice is therefore unanimous and impartial: it is a choice made as if for everyone, since the chooser could turn out to be anyone.

3. The rationality of the parties and the maximin rule. Rawls assumes the parties are rational and want to secure the best possible share of primary goods — the all-purpose means (rights, liberties, opportunities, income, wealth, self-respect) that any rational person wants whatever their life plan. Because they are ignorant of their own identity and risk ending up in the worst-off position, Rawls argues they will not gamble on a utilitarian calculation that maximises total welfare while permitting some to be badly off. Instead they will use the maximin rule: choose the alternative whose worst outcome is better than the worst outcome of any other alternative. In other words, they will choose principles that guarantee the best possible condition for the least advantaged, since they might themselves be that person.

4. The two principles of justice chosen. Under these constraints, Rawls argues the parties would agree to two principles:

• First principle (equal liberty): each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme for all.
• Second principle (fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle): social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are (a) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity, and (b) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.

The first principle has lexical priority over the second: liberty may not be sacrificed for economic gain. Within the second principle, fair equality of opportunity has priority over the difference principle.

5. How this establishes equal distribution as a condition of justice. Rawls's key move is that the parties begin from a presumption of equal distribution of primary goods. Inequality is justified only if it satisfies two conditions: it must arise under fair equality of opportunity (so that positions are open to all on the basis of talent and effort, not birth), and it must improve the position of the worst-off group (the difference principle). If an inequality does not benefit the least advantaged, it is unjust and must be eliminated. Thus equal distribution is the baseline condition of justice; departures from it are permitted only when they work to everyone's advantage, including the worst-off. This is why Rawls rejects both laissez-faire capitalism (which permits inequalities that do not benefit the poor) and utilitarian welfareism (which may sacrifice the few for the aggregate good).

6. The Kantian and contractarian grounding. Rawls interprets the original position as a procedural expression of Kant's idea of autonomy: principles chosen behind the veil are those rational beings would will as universal law, not principles imposed by contingent power. The agreement is thus a moral contract among free and equal persons, and the resulting principles express their nature as autonomous, equal moral agents. This is why Rawls calls his theory "justice as fairness" — fairness is built into the procedure of choice, not into the outcome alone.

7. The difference principle and the least advantaged. The difference principle does not require strict equality; it requires that inequalities be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged. Rawls defends this with the "maximin" reasoning and with the idea that natural talents are morally arbitrary — no one deserves their native endowments, so the benefits of those endowments should be shared. The difference principle thus converts natural and social contingencies into a common asset, and makes equal distribution the baseline against which all inequalities are judged.

8. Criticisms and significance. Critics such as Nozick argue that the veil ignores entitlements and historical justice; communitarians such as Sandel and MacIntyre argue that the abstract, unencumbered self of the original position is unrealistic; Sen and others argue that primary goods are not the right metric of advantage. Nevertheless, Rawls's framework has become the central reference point for contemporary debates on distributive justice, and his concepts of the original position and the veil of ignorance remain the most influential device for testing whether social arrangements treat all persons as free and equal.

Conclusion. For Rawls, equal distribution of social values is not merely a desirable outcome but the very condition of justice, because it is what rational, mutually disinterested persons would choose behind a veil of ignorance that denies them knowledge of their own place in society. The original position and the veil of ignorance together convert the question "What is just?" into "What would free and equal persons agree to?" — and the answer, on Rawls's account, is a scheme of equal basic liberties, fair equality of opportunity, and inequalities only when they benefit the least advantaged.

Natural Justice Is Not Achieved Solely Through Law: Cicero's View

Introduction

Natural justice means the idea of fairness, rightness and moral order that exists independently of any written statute. The question asks whether such justice is achieved solely through law. Cicero's answer is clearly no. For Cicero, law is not the source of justice; rather, justice is the source and standard of law. A law that contradicts nature is not truly law at all. Hence natural justice cannot be achieved solely through human legislation.

Cicero's Concept of True Law

In De Re Publica and De Legibus, Cicero defines true law as "right reason in agreement with nature." It is universal, unchanging and eternal, binding on all peoples at all times. It is not enacted by assemblies or decreed by magistrates; it is discovered by reason. Cicero writes that law is "the mind of God," and that whoever disobeys it "flees from himself" and denies his own human nature. Thus the validity of law depends on its conformity with natural reason, not on its formal enactment.

Why Law Alone Is Insufficient

1. Law can be unjust. Cicero argues that unjust enactments are not laws at all. He gives the example of a law that permits a tyrant to kill citizens or to seize property. Such a "law" is a corruption of law, not law. If justice were achieved solely by legislation, then any tyrant's decree would be just, which is absurd.

2. Justice is prior to law. For Cicero, nature itself implants the principles of justice in human beings. Law is only a later, imperfect expression of that prior moral order. Hence law cannot create justice; it can only reflect or violate it.

3. Universality and permanence. Human laws vary from place to place and change with time. But natural justice is one and unchanging. Cicero says that if justice were only what is written, then the laws of different nations would contradict each other and none could be truly just. The standard must lie outside positive law.

4. Reason as the bond of humanity. Cicero holds that all human beings share reason, and therefore share a common law of nature. This common law is the foundation of justice, not the particular statutes of Rome or any other state.

Implications for the State and Law

Cicero's position implies that the state and its laws must be judged by a higher moral standard. A state that enacts unjust laws loses its moral legitimacy. This is why Cicero praises the Roman constitution only insofar as it approximates natural reason. Law is thus instrumental: it helps achieve natural justice, but it is not the sole or sufficient condition for it. Virtue, reason and natural sociability are equally necessary.

Critical Evaluation

Cicero's view has been criticised as vague and as potentially justifying individual conscience against established law. Yet its influence is immense. It shaped Stoic cosmopolitanism, Christian natural law, and modern ideas of human rights and constitutional limits on power. It reminds us that legality and justice are not identical.

Conclusion

Natural justice is not achieved solely through law. For Cicero, true law is right reason in agreement with nature, and any positive law that departs from nature is no law at all. Law is a necessary but not sufficient instrument of justice. Justice must be grounded in universal reason and natural morality, and only then can legislation serve it. Hence Cicero would firmly reject the claim that law alone achieves natural justice.

a) Non-violence of Mahatma Gandhi

Meaning. Non-violence (ahimsa) is the core of Gandhian political thought. Gandhi did not treat it merely as a personal virtue or as the absence of physical violence; he treated it as a positive, active moral force — the deliberate refusal to injure any living being in thought, word or deed. For him ahimsa was a means as well as an end: a violent means could never produce a non-violent social order.

Philosophical basis. Gandhi drew on the Hindu–Jain tradition of ahimsa, on the Christian Sermon on the Mount, and on Tolstoy's and Ruskin's writings. He held that all life is one and that truth (satya) and non-violence are inseparable — he called their union satyagraha, "holding fast to truth." Since truth cannot be imposed, it must be won by suffering and moral appeal, not by force.

Method. Non-violence in action took the form of satyagraha: non-cooperation, boycott, fasting, strike, peaceful picketing and civil disobedience. The practitioner accepts suffering and punishment voluntarily, without hatred for the opponent. Gandhi insisted on purity of means, on self-purification, and on the conversion — not destruction — of the adversary. He distinguished non-violence of the weak (passive submission) from non-violence of the strong (courageous resistance), and valued only the latter.

Political application. Non-violence was tested in Champaran (1917), the Kheda and Ahmedabad struggles (1918), the Non-Cooperation Movement (1920–22), the Dandi Salt March and Civil Disobedience Movement (1930), and Quit India (1942). It became the working method of the Indian National Congress and later inspired Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela.

Critical evaluation. Critics such as M. N. Roy, Nehru and later Ambedkar argued that non-violence cannot meet armed aggression or entrenched structural oppression; Gandhi's own fasts were sometimes seen as moral coercion. Nevertheless, non-violence remains his most original contribution — a technique of mass political action without arms, and a moral standard for conflict resolution.

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b) Ideological Hegemony

Meaning. Ideological hegemony means the dominance of one class or group over society achieved not mainly by coercion but by consent — by making its own worldview appear natural, universal and common-sensical. The concept is most closely associated with Antonio Gramsci, who developed it in his Prison Notebooks.

Gramsci's formulation. Gramsci distinguished domination (force, exercised through the state's coercive apparatus — army, police, courts) from hegemony (leadership, exercised through civil society — schools, churches, media, family, trade unions). A ruling class rules securely only when it holds both. Hegemony is thus "intellectual and moral leadership" won in the sphere of civil society, and the state in the broad sense is "hegemony protected by the armour of coercion."

How it works. Hegemony operates through consent-producing institutions and practices: education, religion, language, mass media and common sense. It is never total or permanent; it must be continually renewed. When consent breaks down, the ruling class falls back on coercion — a "passive revolution" or a crisis of authority. Counter-hegemony is built when subaltern groups construct an alternative worldview and an alliance (a "historical bloc") capable of replacing the old one.

Significance. The concept widens the meaning of power beyond the state and the economy, and shifts attention to culture, ideas and consent. It explains why domination survives without constant repression, and it gives revolutionaries a strategy — the "war of position" in civil society before the "war of manoeuvre" at the state level.

Criticism. Critics note that Gramsci leaves the boundary between civil society and state unclear, that he overestimates the autonomy of ideas from material relations, and that "hegemony" is used so broadly that it becomes hard to test. Still, the idea remains central to neo-Marxist, cultural studies and post-colonial analysis — for instance in the study of how colonial and nationalist ideologies were produced and contested.

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c) Law is a Product of Season

Meaning. The proposition "law is a product of season" is a figurative way of saying that law is not eternal or purely rational but is shaped by the circumstances of its time — the social, economic, political and cultural "climate" in which it is made. It is a claim about the historical and contextual character of law, associated with the sociological and historical schools of jurisprudence (Montesquieu, Savigny, Maine, Ehrlich, Roscoe Pound).

Montesquieu's view. In The Spirit of the Laws (1748), Montesquieu argued that laws must be relative to the climate, soil, economy, religion, manners and form of government of a people. Law is thus not universal but adapted to local conditions — the earliest systematic statement of the "season" idea.

Historical school. Savigny and the historical school held that law is an organic expression of the Volksgeist, the spirit of a people, growing silently with the nation's customs and changing with its stage of development. Codification imposed from outside was rejected as artificial. Henry Maine added that law evolves from status to contract as society moves from primitive to progressive — a change of "season."

Sociological school. Ehrlich's "living law," Pound's "law in action" and the realist critique all stress that legal rules respond to social needs and interests. Law is thus an instrument of social engineering, adjusted as the social climate changes — for example, factory laws following industrialisation, environmental laws following ecological crisis, and anti-terror laws following security threats.

Illustration from Nepal. Nepali legal history shows the same pattern: the Muluki Ain of 1854 reflected the hierarchical social order of its time; the Muluki Ain of 1963 abolished untouchability and reformed family law under changed political conditions; the Constitution of 1990 reflected the democratic upsurge, and the Constitution of 2015 reflected the federal republican settlement after the 2006 movement. Each was a product of its "season."

Critical evaluation. The proposition is partly true but incomplete. Law is shaped by circumstances, yet it also shapes them — it can be a tool of deliberate reform, as in abolition of slavery or of caste discrimination. It also reflects the interests of dominant groups, not merely a neutral "climate." Hence law is best understood as both a product and a producer of its historical season.