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Review of Political Philosophers

Covered in Does the Center Hold?

 

Hobbes

  1. People are self-interested and rational.
  2. The state of nature equals a war of all against all in which there are no winners.
  3. A strong centralized government (preferably a monarchy) is needed to maintain social order.
  4. The laws of the state define justice.
  5. In conflicts between states, no appeal to justice makes sense.
  6. Revolution is never justified because it returns a society to the state of nature.

 

Locke

  1. Even in the state of nature, there are natural rights.
  2. A government is legitimate if it protects the natural rights of its citizens.
  3. There is a right to revolution if a government violates natural rights.
  4. The best government is a representative democracy with branches of government that check and balance one another’s powers.
  5. Something unclaimed becomes property when someone mixes his labor with it, but this changes later.
  6. Only certain people (white male property-owners) have full rights of citizenship.
  7. Locke's ideas strongly influenced the founding fathers of the U.S. - particularly Thomas Jefferson.

 

Kant

  1. The only intrinsic good is the good will, the disposition to act out of duty in accord with rational morality.
  2. There are two formulations of the categorical imperative.
  3. Act so that you can consistently will that the rule of your action be a universal law.
  4. Act so that you treat persons always as ends and never solely as a means.
  5. The social contract added to this structure.
  6. Only certain people have rights of citizenship.
  7. The social contract requires a league of nations to end the state of nature among nations.

 

Rousseau

a.       People have natural virtues including pity.

b.       Children should be educated in a "state of nature" so they will not be corrupted by society.

c.       Virtues develop into morality in society.

d.       The state should be based on direct democracy and universal male suffrage.T

e.       The decision of  the majority rule defines justice.

 

Marx

a.         Marx ‘s most fundamental values are self-determination and self-realization.

b.         He argues that these values cannot be realized under capitalism.

c.         He develops a theory of alienation within which he argues that under capitalism the species needs and powers of workers are systematically diminished.

d.         He advocates revolutionary social change in which the working class would effect a fundamental reorganization of society.

e.         Please see the link on Marx’s theory of alienation for more details.

 

Mill

  1. The only intrinsic good is happiness.
  2. The utilitarianism maxim defines justice.
  3. There is a vigorous defense of liberty and minority fights.
  4. There is a limitation on the scope of government and a rejection of paternalism.
  5. Democracy with universal suffrage (including women) is advocated, but even a democracy should not be able to abrogate the rights of its citizens.
  6. Oppression does not really benefit oppressors.

 

Nozick

a.       Nozick represents libertarian conservative thought.

b.       There is an emphasis on liberty rights (or negative rights) – especially the right to property.

c.       Here should be only a minimal state with no taxation to support social welfare or positive rights such as a right to a publicly funded education.

d.       A distribution is just if everyone is historically entitled to the portion he or she has – that is, if the distribution came about without violating anyone’s liberty rights.

e.       It is wrong to attempt to evaluate the justice of a distribution through looking at the end-state.

Rawls

a.       Rawls is a  Kantian liberal.

b.       He arrives at his principles of justice by asking what principles of justice would be chosen by a rational person behind a veil of ignorance.

c.       Rawls has two principles of justice – the liberty principle and the fairness principle.

d.       Liberty principle:  Everyone has an equal right to the greatest liberty compatible with a like liberty for everyone else.

e.       Fairness principle: Inequalities in distribution are just as long as they works out to the advantage of all and everyone has an equal opportunity to compete.  In practice this means a society cannot be just without positive rights based on taxation.  For example, Rawls would say that without the rights to education and healthcare, the children of the poor will not have an equal opportunity to compete.