People Flashcards
(24 cards)
Thomas Jefferson
Wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
People are entitled to “inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”
“Government is best who governs least”
Margaret Thatcher
1) There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families.
2) roll back the state
C. B. Macpherson
The individual is “the proprietor of his own person or capacities owing nothing to society for them”
J. S. Mill
1) Harm principle: you can do what you want as long as it doesn’t harm or interfere with the freedom of others: “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over another, against their will, is to prevent harm to others
2) the power of reason frees people from the “despotism of custom”
3) “mankind would be no more justified in silencing one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind”
4) Liberty is a positive and constructive force
John Rawls
1) Liberty principle: “Everyone should be entitled to the widest possible liberty consistent with a like liberty for all”
2) Social institutions (e.g. welfare sate and NHS) correct arbitrary inequality. If everyone was placed behind a “veil of ignorance” they would want society to be broadly equal.
3) “difference principle”: social and economic inequalities should be arranged to benefit the least well off
People who believed in Natural Rights theory
Locke, Paine, Kant
Kant
People are “ends in themselves”
Jeremy Bentham
Utilitarianism: Natural Rights theory is “nonsense on stilts”
Isaiah Berlin
identified “two concepts of liberty”:
1) negative liberty is the absence of external restraints
2) positive liberty is the freedom . to achieve your potential and develop the capacity to act on one’s own freedom.
Tawney
“freedom for the pike is death for the minnow”
Voltaire
“I detest what you say but i will defend to the death your right to say it”
John Locke
1) Equality: natural right to life, liberty, and property.
2) Tolerance: preached religious toleration
3) Public/private divide: the government has no business interfering in the “care of men’s souls”
4) Nightwatchman state: “where there is no law there is no freedom”, social contract theory
Alexis de Tocqueville
Pluralism is important:
1) prevents state becoming too powerful (potential for corruption)
2) balances against “the tyranny of the majority”
3) prevents the domination of society by one group
Hobbes
the state of nature would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”
Lord Acton
“power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely”
utilitarians
James Mill, Jeremy Bentham: “greatest good for the greatest number”
Adam Smith
Wrote “wealth of nations” (1776) in which he argued that the free market is a self-regulating mechanism (“invisible hand of the market”) which should be left alone by govs (“dead hand of government”). Also morally better as maximised personal choice, relationships are 100% voluntary.
Friedrich Von Hayek
the market is self-regulating like a human nervous system - it can relay an infinite number of message simultaneously - because people are unable to understand these complexities interference in the economy by government would corrupt and damage the economy
Darwin
1859: “The origins of species”
Paine
1) believed in natural rights theory
2) the state is a “necessary evil”
T. H. Green
Social liberalism:
1) human nature: egoism tempered by alturism
2) purely -ve lib will lead to exploitation (e.g. child labour)
3) freedom must be considered in positive terms
4) supported welfarism
Keynes
economic management: In periods of economic recession (bust) the government should stimulate the economy by creating jobs for people (e.g. road building project). People would then start spending in other areas of the economy allowing it to boost back up to normal levels (multiplier effect). Sometimes govs should borrow money to do this.
Social Darwinism people
Samuel Smiles, Richard Cobden, Herbert spencer
“Heaven helps those who help themselves”
The conditions of the working class can be improved through “their own efforts and self-reliance, rather than from the law”
“survival of the fittest”.
Darwin
Origins of species
1859
