People

Question 1

Thomas Jefferson

Answer 1

Wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
People are entitled to “inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”
“Government is best who governs least”

Question 2

Margaret Thatcher

Answer 2

1) There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families.
2) roll back the state

Question 3

C. B. Macpherson

Answer 3

The individual is “the proprietor of his own person or capacities owing nothing to society for them”

Question 4

J. S. Mill

Answer 4

1) Harm principle: you can do what you want as long as it doesn’t harm or interfere with the freedom of others: “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over another, against their will, is to prevent harm to others
2) the power of reason frees people from the “despotism of custom”
3) “mankind would be no more justified in silencing one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind”
4) Liberty is a positive and constructive force

Question 5

John Rawls

Answer 5

1) Liberty principle: “Everyone should be entitled to the widest possible liberty consistent with a like liberty for all”
2) Social institutions (e.g. welfare sate and NHS) correct arbitrary inequality. If everyone was placed behind a “veil of ignorance” they would want society to be broadly equal.
3) “difference principle”: social and economic inequalities should be arranged to benefit the least well off

Question 6

People who believed in Natural Rights theory

Answer 6

Locke, Paine, Kant

Question 7

Kant

Answer 7

People are “ends in themselves”

Question 8

Jeremy Bentham

Answer 8

Utilitarianism: Natural Rights theory is “nonsense on stilts”

Question 9

Isaiah Berlin

Answer 9

identified “two concepts of liberty”:

1) negative liberty is the absence of external restraints
2) positive liberty is the freedom . to achieve your potential and develop the capacity to act on one’s own freedom.

Question 10

Tawney

Answer 10

“freedom for the pike is death for the minnow”

Question 11

Voltaire

Answer 11

“I detest what you say but i will defend to the death your right to say it”

Question 12

John Locke

Answer 12

1) Equality: natural right to life, liberty, and property.
2) Tolerance: preached religious toleration
3) Public/private divide: the government has no business interfering in the “care of men’s souls”
4) Nightwatchman state: “where there is no law there is no freedom”, social contract theory

Question 13

Alexis de Tocqueville

Answer 13

Pluralism is important:

1) prevents state becoming too powerful (potential for corruption)
2) balances against “the tyranny of the majority”
3) prevents the domination of society by one group

Question 14

Hobbes

Answer 14

the state of nature would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”

Question 15

Lord Acton

Answer 15

“power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely”

Question 16

utilitarians

Answer 16

James Mill, Jeremy Bentham: “greatest good for the greatest number”

Question 17

Adam Smith

Answer 17

Wrote “wealth of nations” (1776) in which he argued that the free market is a self-regulating mechanism (“invisible hand of the market”) which should be left alone by govs (“dead hand of government”). Also morally better as maximised personal choice, relationships are 100% voluntary.

Question 18

Friedrich Von Hayek

Answer 18

the market is self-regulating like a human nervous system - it can relay an infinite number of message simultaneously - because people are unable to understand these complexities interference in the economy by government would corrupt and damage the economy

Question 19

Darwin

Answer 19

1859: “The origins of species”

Question 20

Paine

Answer 20

1) believed in natural rights theory

2) the state is a “necessary evil”

Question 21

T. H. Green

Answer 21

Social liberalism:

1) human nature: egoism tempered by alturism
2) purely -ve lib will lead to exploitation (e.g. child labour)
3) freedom must be considered in positive terms
4) supported welfarism

Question 22

Keynes

Answer 22

economic management: In periods of economic recession (bust) the government should stimulate the economy by creating jobs for people (e.g. road building project). People would then start spending in other areas of the economy allowing it to boost back up to normal levels (multiplier effect). Sometimes govs should borrow money to do this.

Question 23

Social Darwinism people

Answer 23

Samuel Smiles, Richard Cobden, Herbert spencer

“Heaven helps those who help themselves”
The conditions of the working class can be improved through “their own efforts and self-reliance, rather than from the law”
“survival of the fittest”.

Question 24

Darwin

Answer 24

Origins of species

1859