principles of justice that serve as guidelines are stated as follows: Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme for all; and in this scheme the equal political liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value. Social and economic inequalities…
The Enlightenment was a time of belief and discovery, but it did not get that way in a single day. It took centuries for the Enlightenment to begin but it started with Absolute Monarchy. Absolute Monarchy is where one ruler has all the power. It ignited the desire for knowledge which then led to the Scientific Revolution. The Scientific Revolution was a time where the people of Europe started to or became weary of traditional ideas and wondered about the universe and the functions of the human…
liberty were large contributions to the Enlightenment and are the biggest influence that he left on our world today. Locke’s ideas and writings contributed to the Enlightenment through his influence on people concerning his theory of knowledge, his political philosophy on the the importance of a people’s consent for their government, and his philosophy of education. Locke’s most prominent contribution to the Enlightenment comes from his thoughts and ideas on epistemology, in which he explores…
When setting up a just society, which value should be of utmost importance: liberty, fairness, happiness, or security? Upon examining Thomas Hobbes, John Stuart Mill, and John Rawls, we notice that all three were philosophers of Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism focuses that the happiness and general well-being of the majority should take priority over an individual; however, Utilitarianism also attempts to define the capacity of freedom of an individual’s liberty under sovereign authority. From…
The English philosopher and political John Locke was born August 29, 1632, in Wrington, United Kingdom. Years 1652-1667, Locke was a student and then priest at Christ Church, Oxford, where he studied metaphysics and classics. John Locke was educated about medicine and a believer in the experiential approaches of the Scientific Revolution. Year 1666, Locke met the legislator Anthony Ashley Cooper, who later became the first Earl of Shaftesbury. The two grew a strong friendship that soon turned…
Plato’s The Republic brings the idea of what truly is justice. Is it what society see it to be, what one sees it to be, or is justice such an aloof ideal that man is still trying to comprehend what exactly justice is to one’s soul. On the terms of understanding justice one must also think if they need justice and if so what it means to them. The value they hold to justice is something such as an intrinsic good which Plato elaborates on in The Republic where the definition and need for justice is…
Absolutism states that monarchs have the divine right to rule people and received their authority from God. The monarchs have all of the power and everyone else must obey the monarchs. To do that, the monarchs must take away the power of the powerful nobles. Louis XIV did this by moving the powerful nobles to his court at Versailles where they were occupied with numerous activities. He then appointed people from the middle class to government positions, where he could dominate them and keep them…
nature has forced humans to confront their “unsocial sociability” (Kant,1991a,pp.44-45) as seen in the states and societies humans have formed. However, Kant overestimates human cooperation as “providence” (Kant,1991b,pp.108) does not account for political, cultural, religious and racial conflicts in the 20th and 21st centuries as seen by the World Wars, the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, the Holocaust, the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and American police brutality against Black youth which all reflect…
The writings of Nicolo Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes Although the ideal societies of Machiavelli and Hobbes may have been plausible solutions to political violence in their respective eras, neither man’s ideas translate particularly well to a creating a peaceful society in the present day. In The Leviathan, Hobbes outlines his rationale for creating a society that is ruled by a sovereign (or “Leviathan”) who is given complete power by the people. According to Hobbes, the existence of this…
Athens and Sparta were bitter enemies. Despite sharing the Greek peninsula, the same gods and goddesses and even fighting together in the Persian war they had little else in common. As powerful city-states they developed very different societies, thought they were only about 150 miles apart. Athens became a center for philosophy whereas as Sparta was more war-like in nature. Overall, Athens had a more democratic government, a trade based economy, and a more open society than Sparta which focused…