State

Cards (7)

  • Hobbes:
    -Without government humans would be forced to live in a violent state of nature
    -Order only to be achieved by a social compact involving the individuals of society and the head of state, namely the monarch
    -Compact gives the sovereign legitimacy to pass legislation as the state sees fit
  • Hobbes:
    -Individuals trade some individual freedoms for legal and physical state protection- rule of law would ensure order
    -Individuals bound to follow those laws
    -Strong authoritative government to guarantee equilibrium of order and the need to live a free life
    -Organic authoritarian: strong state that enforces law and order, upholds traditional values and oversees a society bound by a common culture
  • Burke:
    -The state, controlled by the ruling class, has a paternalistic responsibility or noblesse oblige to society's weaker elements
    -If the state fails to counter societal problems, it runs the risk of the established order collapsing
    -'A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation' - change to conserve
  • Burke:
    -State intervenes more in both society and the economy
    -Organic authoritarian: strong state that enforces law and order, upholds traditional values and oversees a society bound by a common culture
    -Strong authoritative government to guarantee equilibrium of order and the need to live a free life
  • Oakeshott:
    -Traditional state and empiricism
    -Change to conserve: carefully informed change guided by pragmatism and empiricism so that 'the cure is not worse than the disease'
    -Violent fascist and communist regimes examples of flawed rationalism
  • Rand:
    -Feared the state interfering in individual's lives. State interference the product of a flawed understanding of altruism
    -Belief in negative liberty the philosophical justification for 'rolling back the state'
    -'rolling back the state' not just economically but in social matters such as homosexuality and abortion
    -Not an anarchist as required a small state to maintain free markets
    -Opposed welfare provision if state sponsored
    -Change to improve
  • Nozick:
    -Miniaturist government with minimal interference in the lives of individuals makes for the best society
    -State's primary function to protect individual human rights
    -Disagreed with Hobbes, Burke and Oakeshott that the state had legitimacy to interfere in society based on a hierarchical social contract: rather than reinforcing individual freedoms, state interference does the opposite
    -State has too much power over personal freedoms
    -Critical of the state determining welfare