State

• 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