Mid Term: Short Answers

Question 1

What exactly does Fukuyama mean by “the end of History”?

Answer 1

“The end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” (2, CR)

Question 2

Why, according to Fukuyama, will the end of History be a very sad time?

Answer 2

Yes. Fukuyama argues that society will be boring. “In the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy, just the perpetual caretaking of the museum of human history.” (16, CR)

Question 3

What “will be the battle lines of the future,” according to Huntington?

Answer 3

“The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.” (17, CR)

Question 4

What are the eight civilizations that will shape the world in the future, according to Huntington?

Answer 4

They are: Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly Africa civilization. (20, CR)

Question 5

What, according to Locke, is “our only Star and compass”?

Answer 5

Reason

Question 6

What objection does Locke believe will be raised to his doctrine “That in the State of Nature every one has the Executive Power of the Law of Nature”?

Answer 6

Self-love will make men partial to themselves and their friends. Ill nature, passion, and revenge will carry them too far in punishing others. (275, TT)

Question 7

What, according to Locke, is the “Fence” to “my Preservation” and also the “Foundation”?

Answer 7

Freedom is. (279, TT)

Question 8

Why, according to Locke, is it “Lawful for a Man to kill a Thief”?

Answer 8

“…using force, where he has no right, to get me into his power, let his pretense be what it will, I have no reason to suppose, that he, who would take away my liberty, would not when he had me in his power, take away every thing else.” Therefore, state of war. (280, TT)

Question 9

What, according to Locke, did God command “Man” to do “when he gave the World in common to all Mankind”?

Answer 9

“…commanded man also to labor, and the penury of his condition required it of him.” “…to subdue the Earth, i.e. improve it for the benefit of life, and therein lay out something upon it that his own, his labor.” (291, TT)

Question 10

What, according to Locke, do “Nature and the Earth” furnish us?

Answer 10

“Nature and the Earth furnished only the almost worthless materials, as in themselves.” Meaning the rawest of raw materials that humans need to apply labor to. (298, TT)

Question 11

What, according to Locke, is wrong with telling “People they may provide for themselves, by erecting a new Legislative, when by Oppression, Artifice, or being delivered over to a Foreign Power, their old one is gone”?

Answer 11

Same as “to tell them they may expect relief, when it is too late, and the evil is past cure.” When it comes to tyranny, be preventative, not curative. (411, TT)

Question 12

How does Locke answer the objection that “to lay the Foundation of Government in the unsteady Opinion, and uncertain Humour of the People, is to expose it to certain ruine”?

Answer 12

“People are not so easily got out of their old forms, as some are apt to suggest.” People don’t change and adapt that quickly, “aversion to quit their old constitutions.” (414, TT)

Question 13

Under what conditions is it “not to be wonder’d,” according to Locke, that the people should rouse themselves to overthrow their government and establish a new one?

Answer 13

“But if a long train of abuses, prevarications, and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel, what they lie under, and see, whither they are going…” (415, TT)

Question 14

“Who shall be Judge whether the Prince or Legislative act contrary to their Trust,” according to Locke?

Answer 14

“The people shall be the judge.” The prince has ‘trust reposed in him’, more responsible for what happens; he has the power. (427, TT)

Question 15

Why are governments instituted among men, according to Jefferson?

Answer 15

To secure the peoples’ pursuit of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”

Question 16

When exactly, according to Jefferson, do the people have the right to overthrow the government?

Answer 16

“whenever any form of government becomes destructive at its ends (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness), it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government.” (49, CR)

Question 17

17. What exactly do the signers of the Declaration “mutually pledge to each other”?

Answer 17

“We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” (47, CR)

Question 18

What are the “wholly new discoveries” that the modern science of politics has made, according to Publius?

Answer 18

1. The regular distribution of power into distinct departments
2. the introduction of legislative balances and checks
3. the institution of courts composed of judges holding their offices during good behavior
4. the representation of the people in the legislature by deputies of their own election.” (67, FP)

Question 19

What exactly does Publius mean by “faction”?

Answer 19

“a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” (72, FP)

Question 20

Where are “the latent causes of faction” sown according to Publius?

Answer 20

“A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government;… an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power”

Question 21

What has been the most common and durable source of faction, according to Publius?

Answer 21

“the various and unequal distribution of property”

Question 22

Can the causes of faction be removed, according to Publius? (72-73, FP)

Answer 22

No. To do so, you would need to “destroy the liberty which is essential to its existence” or “give every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.”

Question 23

What exactly does Publius mean by a “pure democracy”?

Answer 23

“a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person” (76, FP)

Question 24

What “may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny,” according to Publius?

Answer 24

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective…” (298, FP)

Question 25

Which is the most powerful of the three branches of govern­ment, according to Publius?

Answer 25

Legislative (320, FP)

Question 26

Which is the weakest of the three branches of government, according to Publius?

Answer 26

Executive (320, FP)

Question 27

Give four reasons why Publius is opposed to limiting the number of terms that a President may serve.

Answer 27

1. Diminution of the inducements to good behavior
   2. Temptation to sordid views, to peculation, and, in some instances, to usurpation
   3. Depriving the community of the advantage of the experience gained by the Chief Magistrate in the exercise of his office
   4. Banishing men from stations in which, in certain emergencies of the State, their presence might be of the greatest moment to the public interest or safety
   5. It would operate as a constitutional interdiction of stability in the administration (438, FP)

Question 28

What does Lincoln mean by “political religion”?

Answer 28

“…swear by the blood of the revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others… Let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor” (57, CR)

Question 29

What did the founding generation seek to “display before an admiring world”?

Answer 29

“the capability of a people to govern themselves.” (58,CR)

Question 30

What does Lincoln mean by a “towering genius”?

Answer 30

“Disdains a beaten path. Seeks regions unexplored. Seeks no distinction in adding story to story. Denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. Scorns to tread in footsteps of predecessor. Thirsts and burns for distinction.” (59, CR)

Question 31

What, according to Lincoln, is this “great civil war” testing?

Answer 31

“whether that nation, or any nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal and so dedicated, can long endure.”

Question 32

What, according to Tocqueville, did he see, when in America, that was “more than America”?

Answer 32

“The image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or hope from its progress.” (p.13)

Question 33

What, according to Tocqueville, does the tyrannical majority in America do to those who disagree with it?

Answer 33

“You are free not to think as I do; your life, your goods, everything remains to you; but from this day on, you are a stranger among us.”

“You shall remain among men, but you shall lose your rights of humanity”

Question 34

What tempers the tyranny of the majority in the United States, according to Tocqueville?

Answer 34

1. Associations (p.181)
2. Administrative Decentralization
3. Lawyers
4. Jury system / Judiciary

Question 35

What group forms the highest political class in America, according to Tocqueville?

Answer 35

Lawyers (more in Ch. 8)

Question 36

What are the three parts into which Tocqueville divides science? Which of the three should those who “are called upon to direct the nations of our day” bring all their efforts to sustain?

Answer 36

1. Theoretical Principles (physics)
2. General Truths (Applied Nuclear Physics)
3. Application (engineering)
   “The first contains the most theoretical principles, the most abstract notions, those whose application is not known or is very distant.
   The second is composed of general truths which, still depending on pure theory, nevertheless lead by a direct, short path to practice.
   The processes of application and the means of execution fill out the third.”

Question 37

What exactly does Tocqueville mean by “individualism”?

*define and compare to selfishness

Answer 37

“Individualism is a reflective and peaceable sentiment that disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of those like him and to withdraw to one side with his family and his friends, so that after having thus created a little society for his own use, he willingly abandons society at large to itself”

Very important to contrast individualism with selfishness, which is defined as “Selfishness is a passionate and exaggerated love of self that brings man to relate everything to himself alone and to prefer himself to everything” and “Individualism is of democratic origin, and it threatens to develop as conditions become equal.”

Question 38

What, according to Tocqueville, causes Americans at times to manifest a “fierce spiritualism”?

Answer 38

“Man did not give himself the taste for the infinite and the love of what is immortal. These sublime instincts are not born of a caprice of his will: they have their immovable foundation in his nature; they exist despite his efforts.” (510)

Question 39

To what does Tocqueville mainly attribute “the singular prosperity and growing force” of the American people?

Answer 39

The superiority of its women (end of Ch. 12)

Question 40

According to Tocqueville, what is the difference between the authority of the despotic government which he describes and the authority of a parent?

Answer 40

“It would resemble paternal power if, like that, it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably on childhood; it likes citizens to enjoy themselves provided that they think only of enjoying themselves. It willingly works for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that; it provides for their security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances; can it not take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living?” (towards end of Ch. 6)

Question 41

What are the three ways in which the division of labor increases productivity, according to Smith?

Answer 41

1. to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman
2. to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another
3. to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labor, and enable one man to do the work of many (67)

Question 42

What causes man to become “as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become,” according to Smith?

Answer 42

The division of labor. “The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.”

Question 43

What are the three components of price, according to Smith?

Answer 43

Rent, wages, and profit (no citation)

Question 44

What exactly is the first sentence of Part I (“Bourgeois and Proletarians”) of the Communist Manifesto?

Answer 44

“The history of all HITHERTO existing society is the history of class struggles.” (91)

Question 45

What kind of epidemic breaks out in capitalist society which “in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity,” according to Marx and Engels?

Answer 45

“The epidemic of over-production.” (93, top of second column)

Question 46

Who exactly are the Communists, according to Marx and Engels?

Answer 46

1. the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others
2. they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of the march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.”
3. Aim = “formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.” (96, mid of 1st column)

Question 47

What single sentence sums up the theory of the Communists, according to Marx and Engels?

Answer 47

“Abolition of private property” (top, 2nd column, 96)

Question 48

Name 4 of the 10 measures that the Communists will generally take in the most advanced countries after the revolution, according to Marx and Engels.

Answer 48

1) Heavy progressive or graduated income tax
2) Abolition of all rights of inheritance
3) Centralization of communication and transport in the state
4) Equal Obligation of all to work

Question 49

What exactly is the last line of the Communist Manifesto?

Answer 49

Workingmen of all countries, unite! (100)

Question 50

What exactly does Lenin mean by the “state”?

Answer 50

“The state is the product and the manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises when, where, and to the extent that the class antagonisms cannot be objectively reconciled. And conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable.” (102).

Question 51

What will be the form of political society during the transition from capitalism to communism, according Lenin?

Answer 51

“revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.” (105, top left)

Question 52

What rule must society realize before the state can wither away absolutely, according to Lenin?

Answer 52

“as a general rule, only through a violent revolution.” (104, top left)

Question 53

What, according to Lenin, must the Communists do before it is “possible to speak of freedom”?

Answer 53

“Only in Communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists has been completely broken, when the capitalists have disappeared, when there are no classes (i.e. there is no difference between the members of society in their relation to the social means of production), only then ‘the state ceases to exist’ and ‘it becomes possible to speak of freedom’.” (105, 2nd column)