Brainscape's Knowledge GenomeTM

Browse over 1 million classes created by top students, professors, publishers, and experts.


See full index

Politics Paper 1 > 6.3 Conservative thinkers > Flashcards

6.3 Conservative thinkers Flashcards

1
Q

6

Which branch do each of the key conservative thinkers belong to?

A
  • Thomas Hobbes - traditional
  • Edmund Burke - traditional
  • Michael Oakeshott - traditional
  • Ayn Rand - New Right (neo liberal)
  • Robert Nozick - New Right (neo-liberal)

Yet ideas of traditional thinkers influenced other branches e.g. Hobbes - neo-con; Burke/Oakeshott - ON

How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
2
Q

5

Describe Hobbes’ order

A
  • Society is hierarchal ordered by rank and influence
  • Absolute monarchy governs the ‘commonwealth’
  • Strong authoritative government in organic framework guarantees equilibrium between order and freedom
  • Social contract to prevent ‘state of nature’
  • organic society
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
3
Q

7

Describe Hobbes’ human nature

A
  • Pessimistic view
  • Humans are irrational
  • Cannot understand complexities of modern political systems
  • Require practical strategies (e.g. social hierarchy) rather than abstract ideas (e.g. classless society)
  • informs trustee model of representation
  • Driven by individualistic ‘desire of power’, not communal
  • ‘state of nature’
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
4
Q

4

Describe Hobbes’ views on the social contract

A
  • Order only achieved by social contract where individuals cede freedoms to all-powerful sovereign in return for legal and physical protection
  • This grants sovereign legitimacy to pass legislation and determine rights of individuals
  • Therefore society cannot pre-exist state
  • State resulted from social contract - no historical event which created this contract
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
5
Q

4

Describe Hobbes’ acceptance of a corrupt sovereign

A
  • Sovereign not bound by social contract or law
  • Recieve obedience of people who cede autonomy in hope that sovereign will maintain order
  • Accepts sovereign may behave in corrupt manner
  • Yet insists such behaviour is unwise as the removal of individual safety could deprive sovereign of power
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
6
Q

3

Describe Hobbes’ views on absolute government and sovereign

A
  • Best way to avoid disorder in society
  • Sovereign controlled all aspects of society (law, religion and parliament) and economy (private property and taxation)
  • Sovereign was personification (representation) of state
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
7
Q

3

Describe Hobbes’ ‘state of nature’

A
  • Hypothetical scenario with no authority and security
  • Would create perpetual conflict where individuals only cared about self-interest
  • In the ‘natural condition of mankind’, humans hold equal ability to kill eachother
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
8
Q

4

List Hobbes’ key quotes on order

A
  • Society without order and sovereign would be a ‘perpetual and restless desire for power’
  • ‘a war of all against all’ in the ‘state of nature’
  • life without order would be ‘nasty, brutish and short’
  • ‘commonwealth’
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
9
Q

2

List Hobbes’ key quotes on human imperfection

A
  • ‘natural condition of mankind’
  • Selfish desires of humankind ‘more potent than reason’
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
10
Q

4

Describe Burke’s organic society

A
  • Society not static, but often has to ‘change to conserve’
  • Change should be slow and evolutionary
  • ‘little platoons’ enable organic change
  • noblesse oblige to protect social order
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
11
Q

2

Describe Burke’s ‘little platoons’

A
  • Small communities that retain their own identity
  • Bind to enable wider integration into ‘the nation’
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
12
Q

6

Describe Burke’s tradition

A
  • Represents culminated wisdom of past generations and should be respected
  • Society is contract between ‘the dead, the living and those yet to be born’ - breaking from Hobbesian social contract
  • Consequently, change should be slow and cautious
  • Society/state emerges organically and matures into traditions and customs
  • Prefers constitutional monarchy, against Hobbes’ preference for absolute monarchy
  • Did not support democracy, yet beleived it was unwise to resist it if it was necessary to preserve vital institutions
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
13
Q

4

Describe Burke’s empiricism

A
  • Change should be made on practical experience from past
  • Political change should be organic, rather than via revolution
  • There is an inherent virtue in common-sense values i.e. the ‘wisdom of unlettered men’
  • Trustee model of representation
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
14
Q

5

Describe the Burkean trustee model of representation

A
  • Representatives should make own judgements based on knowledge and experience (empiricism)
  • In that way serve best interests of public
  • Opposed delegate model
  • Opposed referendums
  • Tradition of trustees preferable to technocrats
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
15
Q

5

Describe Burke’s views on noblesse oblige and social order

A
  • Society naturally unequal and hierarchal
  • Aristocracy should lead social order
  • Held paternalistic responsibility to solve weaker elements of society
  • Thus maintain equilibrium between order and freedom
  • However opposed extension of franchise, fearing mob rule
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
16
Q

3

Describe Burke’s views on human imperfection

A
  • Scope of human reason and understanding is limited, so are more likely to fail than succeed when following rationalistic thoughts
  • Therefore change should be gradual and careful
  • Yet argues that human nature is more communal (‘little platoons’) and individuals seek happiness, differing from Hobbes
How well did you know this?
1
Not at all
2
3
4
5
Perfectly
17
Q

4

List Burke’s key quotes on organic change

A
  • ‘Change to conserve’
  • ‘little platoons’
  • Politics should be adjusted to ‘human nature’ and not to ‘human reason’
  • a state without some change is ‘without the means of its conservation’
18
Q

2

List Burke’s key quotes on tradition and empiricism

A
  • ‘the wisdom of unlettered men’
  • ‘society is a contract between the dead, the living and those yet to be born’
19
Q

2

List Burke’s key quotes on hierarchy

A
  • ‘true natural aristocracy’
  • ‘all men have equal rights, but not to equal things’
20
Q

7

Describe Oakeshott’s human imperfection

A
  • Modern society is unpredictable and multifaceted
  • Faith in rationalism is therefore misplaced as theories oversimplify complex situations
  • Beyond ability of humans to understand true nature of reality
  • Utopias unattainable as perfection cannot be created by imperfect societies
  • Critical of ON state intervention
  • Critical of leader acting on the ‘authority of his own reason’ rather than experience
  • ‘Politics of faith’ - decision-making grounded in empiricism and pragmatism, not rationality
21
Q

4

Describe Oakeshott’s ‘politics of scepticism’

A
  • Implementation of abstract ideas often leads to unintended negative consequences
  • Rationalists underestimate complexity of reality
  • Don’t understand that in attempting to imrpove society or economy, they worsen the situation
  • Therefore change should be empiricial and cautious - ‘cure is not worse than the disease’
22
Q

2

How do Oakeshott and Hobbes differ on human imperfection?

A
  • Oakeshott argues that humans are ‘fragile and fallible’ but capable of benevolence
  • Therefore holds less destructive view than Hobbes
23
Q

3

Describe Oakeshott’s pragmatism

A
  • Government making decisions rooted on empricism is best placed to serve interests of people
  • ‘Politics of scepticism’ - place faith on long-standing traditions and customs
  • Politics should not have rigid direction or fixed goal - should be guided by pragmatism
24
Q

2

Describe Oakeshott’s views on organic change

A
  • Prefers status quo more than Burke
  • Yet accepts needed for change rooted in empricism and pragmatism to maintain tradition
25
Q

3

Describe Oakeshott’s views on tradition

A
  • Secularisation leading to adoption of rationalistic ideas as sort of ‘intellectual replacement’
  • Supports institutions like HoL and monarchy to provide societal stability
  • Change should avoid unproven societies
26
Q

5

List Oakeshott’s key quotes

A
  • ‘cure is not worse than the disease’
  • ‘intellectual replacement’
  • humans are ‘fragile’ and ‘fallible’
  • ‘what has stood the test of time is good’
  • ‘prefer the tried to untried’
27
Q

2

Describe Rand’s rejection of human imperfection

A
  • Individuals are rational - against Trad Con/ON
  • Thought religion was deeply irrational
28
Q

5

Describe Rand’s objectivism

A
  • Reason forms central basis of human nature, which can be used to gain objective knowledge
  • Ethical codes that contradict reality do not exist
  • Individuals who experience negative freedom are best able to comprehend reality
  • therefore can independently achieve self-realisation and self-fulfilment
  • Highest moral purpose is to achieve personal happiness
29
Q

2

What did Rand advocate as a result of objectivism

A
  • atomistic society
  • Laissez-faire free-market
30
Q

4

Describe Rand’s freedom

A
  • Advocated laissez-faire economy
  • Roll back state economically and socially
  • Indivduals have right to maintain property and income without being taxed
  • Includes support of same-sex relationships and abortion
31
Q

3

Describe Rand’s views on an ‘atomistic’ society

A
  • Loathed organic society because obligations it demanded from individuals eroded individual freedoms, equating it with collectivism
  • Individuals must maintain lives through own efforts
  • Indivdiual hard work is the only method to achieve purpose and productivity
32
Q

3

Describe Rand’s opposition to state-sponsored welfarism

A
  • State interference a result of a flawed understanding of altruism
  • This altruism is evil as it is incompatible with individual freedom and capitalism
  • Advocated voluntarism
33
Q

2

Describe Rand’s views on the state

A
  • Only moral purpose of state and society is to protect individual rights
  • State should be minimal to enforce law and order and contracts
34
Q

4

List Rand’s key quotes

A
  • ‘virtue of selfishness’
  • altruism is ‘the basic evil’
  • ‘atomistic individualism’
  • ‘man must be the beneficiary of his own actions’
35
Q

4

Describe Nozick’s libertarianism

A
  • Individuals in society cannot be treated as a resource against their will
  • State focibly taxing rich violated their intrinsic freedom
  • Government had no right to encroach upon rights of individuals by transferring income to others
  • Led to 2 broad conclusions
36
Q

2

What concusions did Nozick make on the back of his libertarian beleifs

A
  • ‘minarchist’ government - minimal interference in lives of individuals makes for the best society
  • state’s primary function is to protect individual human rights
37
Q

3

Outline Nozick’s minarchist government

A
  • Very little taxation, no welfare, essentially no laws on human behaviour
  • State solely focussed on defence and law and order - limited to ‘narrow functions of force, theft and enforcement’
  • State-funded welfare system is ‘legalised theft’ of taxation
38
Q

4

Describe Nozick’s rejection of the social contract

A
  • Disagreed with Trad Cons that state held legitimacy to interfere based on hierarchical social contract
  • State interference restricted individual freedoms, rather than reinforcing them
  • Proposed rights-based libertarian system
  • Did not address hierarchal social order, but beleifs suggest preference for social order based on voluntary interactions rather than paternalistic top-down system
39
Q

4

Describe Nozick’s self-ownership

A
  • Accepted individual rationalism
  • Individuals own their bodies, talents, abilities and labour
  • Makes people self-serving in best interests
  • Suported legalisation of drugs
40
Q

3

Describe Nozick’s minarchist society

A
  • Akin to Rand’s atomistic society
  • Communities granted freedom to practise their own particular moral codes
  • Rather than have political or religious values imposed upon them by the state (assimilation)
41
Q

3

List Nozick’s key quotes

A
  • Taxation is ‘legalised theft’
  • ‘narrow functions’ of ‘force, theft, enforcement and so on’
  • ‘there are only individual people… with their own lives’

Politics Paper 1 (27 decks)

Brainscape helps you reach your goals faster, through stronger study habits.
© 2024 Bold Learning Solutions. Terms and Conditions