POL 130 Oral Exam

Plato’s ideas

• Idealism

• Seek the truth & don’t fall for illusions of appearances (Cave analogy)

• We all have inborn special skills that we should use to benefit the community (needs moral virtue to flourish)

• Importance of moral education in society

• Philosophers are the most powerful in society

• Wants to create a fully equal republic

Positive freedom

• Do what is best for the good of all & harmony

• Injustice is like off-key music

• Plato!!

Despotism

• Society run by the majority & desire

• Very lawless & never ending appetite

Machiavelli

• Realism

• Goals for state: freedom from foreign, stability of law, prosperity & glory

• Virtue is important but power is more importatnt (virtu)

• Be willing to manipulate appearences & not be good to be a good leader (not that important to be loved it is more important to be feared)

Locke

• Liberalism

• Law of nature

• Big on property rights

• Need for freedom for equality

• Hierarchy causes inequality

• US society is based on his ideas

Law of nature

• Preserve self & others

• Don’t invade the liberty of others

• Don’t invade the property of others

Rousseau

• With reason comes inequality

• Equality vanished with the establishment of property

• Alienation between rich & poor creates lack of compassion

• Once corrupted can’t go back because of appetite for new wants

• Rationalize away compassion with morality

• Reason, philosophy & science won’t solve inequality

General Will

• Roussesu

• Established in Social Contract

• “what is generally best for the community”

• Needs socialism (no groups)

• Direct democracy (small size)

Negative Freedom

• Free to act for oneself

• Not stuck on illusions

• Knowing the internal truth

Mill

• Utilitarianism (measuring pleasure & pain)

• Best for most people & needs human fulfillment

• Thinks majorities will always be trynanies

• Against paternalism (gov interfears to protects persons welfare)

• Can’t prohibit speech until there is physical violence

• Marketplace of ideas will allow the best ideas to survive so no need to repress speech

Marx

• Communist

• Economic determinism

• Needs capitalism for overproduction before entering a communist society & then the state fades away

• Labor & private property cause alienation

• No clear roadmap of what communism looks like

Economic determinism

• Economic devices are what drive all of society (politics, culture, ideology)

• Our problems come from the system

Psychological determinism

• Our problems come from our internal self

• All from socialization & guilt

• Id (basic instincts & desires), ego (reality & rational), superego (morals)

• Freud

Natural law

• Instict & internal

• Higher moral law

• What we strive for

Positive law

• Man made

• Tries to be natural law but isn’t quite

Redistributive justice

• Holds trials

• Has punishments for accused

• “getting even”

Restorative justice

• Exchange truth for amnesty

• Reconnect & forgiveness

• Public apologies

Historical determinism

• Marx

• Believes that economic systems are what drive history not ideas

Sphere of freedom

• Mill

• How individual liberty interacts with society