Liberalism- The Origins (SB)

Question 1

In many ways where do the roots of Liberalism lie?

Answer 1

In the Reformation

Question 2

What was the Reformation?

Answer 2

A religious movement affecting much of northern Europe, in the late 15th and 16th centuries.

Question 3

Who led the Reformations?

Answer 3

Martin Luther, led religious protestors
(founders of ‘protestant’ Christianity)

Question 4

What did the founders of Protestant Christianity argue?

Answer 4

these founders of ‘protestant’ Christianity argued that individuals seeking to communicate with God, and to understand His commands, need no longer rely on priest, popes and other intermediaries

Question 5

Luther argued that with what could Christianity now assume

Answer 5

Luther argued that Christianity could now assume a more individualistic character with each man and women undertaking their own private prayers and undertaking God’s work in their own way

Question 6

Enlightenment period

Answer 6

An intellectual movement that emerged in the 17th Century and one that had an especially profound effect upon politics in the 18th century

Question 7

The Enlightenment was defined by a belief in…

Answer 7

reason rather than faith

Question 8

The Enlightenment was defined by a belief in reason rather than faith
What did this promote?

Answer 8

relentless debate and inquiry questioning and scrutinising almost anything that hitherto was unthinkingly accepted

Question 9

What were 3 main radical ideas that emerged from the Enlightenment?

Answer 9

1- Each individual is someone with free will

2- That each individual is the best judge of their own interests

3- that each individual’s life should be shaped by the individual’s actions and decisions

Question 10

Which writer began to question individuals with another institution?

Answer 10

John Locke ‘father’ of Liberalism

Question 11

What did John Locke begin to question?

Answer 11

the rs between individuals and governments, seeking to define just why and how individuals should defer to those who governed them

Question 12

John Locke’s question had…?

Answer 12

Revolutionary potential in the 17th Century

Question 13

Why did John Locke’s question have revolutionary potential in the 17th Century?

Answer 13

because hitherto it had been assumed -by both rulers and ruled- that the natural form of government was monarchical; that a King (occasionally a Queen) had been put in place by God ; and that a King’s decision should be instinctively accepted by his/her ‘subjects’

Question 14

The divine rights of kings

Answer 14

doctrine that a King’s decision should be instinctively accepted by his/her ‘subjects’; as he was put in place by God

Question 15

What underpinned the divine rights of kings?

Answer 15

a society and culture dominated by faith, religion and superstition

Question 16

Certain aspects that underpinned the divine rights of king was challenged by what?

Answer 16

The Enlightenment was to challenge and eventually destroy such medieval attitudes

Question 17

For Locke and other Enlightenment philosophers human beings were…

and therefore it was..

Answer 17

uniquely endowed with the power of logic calculation and deduction and

it was logical that human beings should create, by themselves and for themselves, a political system based upon reason-mechanistic theory

Question 18

Mechanistic theory

Answer 18

Linked to the writings of John Locke, this argues that mankind is rational and therefore capable of devising a state that reflects mankind’s needs.

Question 19

What notions did the Mechanistic theory rebuff?

Answer 19

It was a pointed rebuff to notions like the ;divine right of kings’, which argued that the state reflected God’s will and that obedience to that state was a religious duty