Society

• Hobbes:

  -Order only to be achieved by a social compact involving the individuals of society and the head of state

  -Society therefore to balance the need for order and the human need to live a free life

  -Society arises not organically but from a deliberate agreement among individuals for mutual benefit and security

   
• Burke:

  -Tradition and empiricism should be passed down through generations, as a society is a partnership between 'those who are living, those who are dead and those who are to be born'

  -Sometimes society must change to conserve

  -Ruling class has a paternalistic responsibility or noblesse oblige to society's weaker elements

  -Preservation and improvement of society
• Oakeshott:

  -Modern society is unpredictable and multi-faceted

  -Faith in rationalism misplaced as theories oversimply complex situations

  -Rationalism and its doctrines worthless: humans should put their faith in trusted traditions and empiricism

  -Change to conserve

  -Security of longstanding customs and traditions

  -Deep distrust for unproven promises of abstract theories

  -Pragmatism flexible and can acknowledge complex and altering realities in a way that rationalism cannot
• Rand:

  -Objectivism

  -Atomistic society where individuals enjoy negative freedom

  -Heavily disagreed with organic society as the obligations demanded from individuals eroded their freedoms

  -Only moral purpose of society to protect individual rights

  -Voluntarism to provide social welfare so long as it was the individual's choice and not imposed by the state
• Nozick:

  -Private property

  -Voluntary cooperation in a society