A communitarian view on society states that each individual is responsible for his status inside a given community; that such a community is equally responsible for the status of its individuals. It states that any law or practice should be based on a purely democratic and not a simple majoritarian perspective. Polities should be determined to foster participation and deliberation, not to dictate policies but rather mandate a collective perspective. Indeed all this must be done, and more, in an effort to regulate a healthy society in which all individuals are equal in the community and that contribute equally back to the community. However, how can a society be democratic without being majoritarian?
Personality and moral self explain how and why human beings make free choices. The libertarianism theory has been explained by CA Campbell, who said that human beings see themselves as free agents and therefore accept moral responsibility for their actions. Humans must accept responsibility for these actions and face any consequences that may come their way. John Stuart Mill - an influencal figure in Liberatarianism – believe we are free and morally responsible for all our actions. Mill believed it was extremely important that an indivduals free will should not be crushed by society.
In order for a society to be happy and productive, it must provide its citizens with freedom, but in order for people to have freedom they must have a society built on the foundation of justice. A society which has freedom provided through justice will be peaceful, productive and continually improving in order to make a better society. A government founded on the principle of justice, built by unity and equality, provides its citizens with freedom, creating a better society. Two men, of different times and ideologies both offer support for the importance of justice in the attainment of freedom. Rousseau believes that most structured government, run by one person is bad.
John Locke, who is often credited as the father of human rights and liberalism, maintained that humans were free and equal, and that the ideal society was based on a social contract between the humans and those who governed. He basically employed the concept of natural rights and the social contract to argue that the rule of law should replace absolutism in government, that rulers were subject to the consent of the governed and that individuals had an essential right to life, liberty and property. As we mentioned in class, Thomas Hobbes was the one who started the theory of social contract and developed it elaborately arguing for unlimited authority in a ruler. The intellectual journey of liberalism kept going beyond John Locke with the Enlightenment, a period in the 18th century that shows intellectual penetration that questioned old traditions and influenced monarchies. Some other documents asserting individual rights include 1689 the English Bill of Rights, 1789 the French Declaration on the Rights of Man and Citizen and 1791 the US Constitution and Bill of Rights that all are written precursors to today’s human rights documents.
All men have the right to be free and by forming a social contract, a nation can be brought together. He enforced the idea of a republic and that the people under ruling should have a part of the leadership governing how they live and that if government abused its powers ranging from law to tyranny they should be overthrown. Locke helped form the basis of modern liberalism, we use today. One of Locke’s main ideas was that men were born with a blank slate in a ‘state of nature’, and could distinguish right from wrong. He believed that man inherently had an understanding of goodness.
Natural Law means that all human being has three natural rights which are “life, liberty and estates” which are sum up with property. Thus, all human being try to keep these natural rights. However, this can be led the situation that he or she try to take other’s property or natural right to keep their natural right. This is called “State of War”. To prevent repetitive “state of war”, Locke claims the “social contract”.
Thus, all 'classes', 'nations' and 'races' are meaningful political entities. This would mean that a collective group of individuals is capable of self-governing so that collective interests should prevail over individual ones. For example, Robert Owen, set up an experiment community 'kibbutz' system in Israel, whereby settlements are collectivily owned by their members. In this way, socialists upheld collective interests where the growth of state responsibility marks the advance of collectivism. Such view could be compared with the Burkean natural aristocracy.
Comparing Capitalism to Socialism boils down to a comparison of values: individualism vs. collectivism. Under Capitalism, individualism is emphasized to the point that all individuals are, in theory, sovereign beings with certain unalienable rights, endowed by either nature, divine providence or some other objective source. These rights cannot be superseded by anything or anyone, at any time, for any reason. Capitalism postulates that, given all humans are sovereign, the most natural state of humans is that of the Free Market, the unrestricted exchange of goods and services whereby one sovereign person to another. This assumes that all forms of society and civilization roughly boil down to relationships between producers and consumers: at any given moment, every person is either a buyer or a seller of a certain commodity.
Rawls’ Principles of Justice “Justice is the virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought”(Rawls, p. 581). John Rawls’ book, A Theory of Justice, is an in-depth analysis and interpretation of social justice. Rawls presents and discusses two principles of justice, the liberty principle and the equality principle, which are the basis of his theory on justice. Rawls’ first principle of justice states “Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others”(Rawls, p. 586). This principle is basically asserting that fundamental liberties come first over anything concerning justice.
Kant’s view uses a categorical imperative, in which ethics is based upon an absolute, objective, deontologcial theory, in which intentions are more important than consequences. Kant believed that an ethics should be based around something entirely good. He decided that the only thing entirely good in the whole universe is ‘good will’. Everybody must decide ethical decisions in a way in which they put themselves last, fulfill their duty, and commit only selfless acts. This may be psychologically impossible, as many believe there is always a selfish reason for any good deed, however Kant only proposed a theory, and