"Machiavelli's most characteristic, central, and frequently involved concept is that of virtu, a term by no means regularly translatable by "virtue," and certainly not equivalent to virtue in the Christian sense. ... The laws, he says, "make men good"- that is compel them to serve the common good and refrain from barring their fellow citizens, as civil and political life demands. ...
Sensation, was the operation of our own minds called 'internal sense' because we can think of ideas and all ideas come from experience and perception is the first step and degree towards knowledge and a sort of an inlet of all the materials in it. ...
Hobbes describes the state of nature, in which no common power exists, as one of continuous war and violence, and of fear and death. According to Hobbes, in such a condition, "it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in a condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man."" ... Where there is no common Power, there is no Law: where no Law, no Injustice. ... Because of intrinsic traits of natural man, entering into a civil society (a social contract) is the only way to provide peace and the common de...
Introduction EDWARD B. MCLEAN Western man's pursuit of liberty has been constant. Indeed, the concept of liberty is central to Western political thought and history. The following essays, which were the first of the Goodrich Lecture Series at Wabash College, examine the concept of liberty as it h...
MASTERWORKS OF POLITICAL THEORY Midterm Essay Niccolo Machiavelli, Martin Luther, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke were four political theorists who shared a like mind in the need for the foundation of government and the extent to which its power and authority should reach. Furthermore, although ...
The "state of nature- of human beings was the focal point for many of the 1500th -1900th century philosophers. Many of these philosophers attempted to understand and describe humans in this original condition. One of the most intriguing aspects of man was the concept of human interaction as it per...
Jean-Jacques Rousseau constructed The Social Contract to solve the question of freedom, specifically, the preservation and survival of what he terms as civil freedom, and his solution to this problem, in its most general sense, is the construction of the civil state. ... The Social Contract is meant to unfetter each individual, each irrational "animal," and help man to fully know his freedom by using self-control and by signing himself over to the civil state: to the communal movement towards the common good, directed by the general will (Book I: VIII 185). ...
Jean-Jacques Rousseau constructed The Social Contract to solve the question of freedom, specifically, the preservation and survival of what he terms as civil freedom, and his solution to this problem, in its most general sense, is the construction of the civil state. ... The Social Contract is meant to unfetter each individual, each irrational "animal," and help man to fully know his freedom by using self-control and by signing himself over to the civil state: to the communal movement towards the common good, directed by the general will (Book I: VIII 185). ...
This characterization seems to preclude viewing Lear on the Aristotelian model of a tragic hero, as someone raised above the ordinary level of humanity, except in the most conventional sense of his social status. ... As consoling as this vision of Lear's education through suffering may be, it leaves us with a sense that the dramatic issues of the play can in the end be fully resolved. ... Ultimately, this kind of reading threatens to reduce King Lear to a form of melodrama, a story of the straightforward conflict of clearly identifiable and separable forces of good and evil, in which the ...
American Foreign Policy / POLS 4690 A paper submitted to Dr. Galatas of the History and Political Science Department at Georgia South Western State University The Era of Good Feelings: An Era of Idealism or Realism? The Era of Good Feelings was the national mood of the United States from 1815 to 1825, as first described by the Boston Columbian Centinel on July 12, 1817. The "era" generally is considered coextensive with President James Monroe's two terms (1817-25), it really began in 1815, when for the first time American citizens could afford to pay less attention to Europ...
