Summary Of John Stuart Mill's Consideration On Representative Government

The object of this essay is to show a simple evaluation of john Stuart mill principle “an action is right that it does not cause harm to another person” I will be exercising both evaluations and explaining why the positive side outweighs the negative side of the principle, in a society that it’s people are emancipated to control their own opinions.

Introduction Each generation has gone through struggles that would later come to define them. In the fifties there was WWII, sixties there was the Vietnam Conflict, eighties there was the Cold War and today there is the War on Terror. These conflict shaped justice, morality and culture. Spurring evolution in all aspects of life including but not limited to fashion, law, music and cinema. These evolving aspects of culture were often transgressive and therefor created unique and novel challenges for each individual existing within.

Thomas Hobbes and John Locke are two theorists known for their views regarding the social contract. Both theorists study the origins of government and the level of authority given to the state over individuals, thoroughly constructing their arguments through the social contract. A philosophical approach was used in both Hobbes’s and Locke’s arguments, however supporting different authorities. Thomas Hobbes advocates for absolutism whilst John Locke advocates for a constitutional government. Through the close examination of the state of nature, the relationships between subject and sovereign and views regarding the social contract, one can observe a more sensible basis for constructing a successful political society.

The main philosophy of John Locke, a famous and well-known Enlightenment philosopher, involves his theory of natural law and natural rights given to mankind. In this particular article, entitled “The Consent of the Governed”, part of his work Two Treatises of Government, Locke addresses importance of man’s natural state and its main characteristics, the forming of a government and what it offers and the relationship between a government and its subjects. According to Locke, man’s natural state is a state of equality, with no man being of higher power than another and all are welcome to have complete control over their own lives. He states that, by nature, men are “all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate,

The Primary objective of all leaders should be to control citizens. A society that allows authority to be challenged will never succeed. This source depicts an authoritarian or totalitarian view of what a governing body should look like. The author suggests that the primary objective of government should be the “control of the citizens”, and therefore that the individuals should entirely obey said government.

John Locke's Second Treatise of Government is a work which could be considered modern in nature. Throughout the book Locke espouses ideals such as a the fundamentally equal nature of all humans, and the purpose of government not as a religious institution, but as a tool of the people.

Utilitarianism is an ethical theory summed up by the phrase, the right action is one which creates the sum total amount of happiness for the greatest number. Therefore, utilitarians believe that morality’s purpose is to maximise the number of good things, such as happiness, and decrease the number of bad things, such as unhappiness, in the world. Critics of utilitarianism believe that this theory cannot accommodate moral rights since we go against our intuitions in moral dilemmas. However, utiltarians have a response to these criticisms which shows that utilitarianism is defensible.

“The sacred rights of mankind,” writes Alexander Hamilton, “are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power”. In his response to Samuel Seabury’s argument for obedience to the king, Hamilton invokes the sacred rights of mankind–universal truths echoing down through the past and reaching far into the future–as his basis for rebellion. These sacred and universal rights form the foundation for politics, which undergirds not only the arguments of the Founding Fathers, but Classical Republicanism itself. The success of politics hinges upon its universality.

With a world teeming of vast cultures and beliefs, it is difficult to claim what is moral versus what is simply just law from one person to the next. John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher, tells of a social idea branded by its name ‘utilitarianism,’ which outlines his ideations. He utilizes many different types of syntax to create and defend his points. These types include question and answer, various styles of sentences, and finally through antithesis. With the help of his inciteful writing style, his main points of his philosophy are able to be glorified and preached from one person to the next.

SocINDEX with Full Text. Web. 18 Dec. 2015. Warner, Beth E. "John Stuart Mill 's Theory of Bureaucracy within Representive Government: Balancing Competence and Participation." Public administration review 61.4 (2001): 403-13.

John Stuart Mill, at the very beginning of chapter 2 entitled “what is utilitarianism”. starts off by explaining to the readers what utility is, Utility is defined as pleasure itself, and the absence of pain. This leads us to another name for utility which is the greatest happiness principle. Mill claims that “actions are right in proportions as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.” “By Happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain, by happiness, pain and the privation of pleasure”. (Mill, utilitarianism, p.697)

The idea behind Kantian Ethics is that doing the right thing is not about the consequences of our actions but rather the principle motivating the action. Actions must be performed out of duty, that is, it is done solely because we have an obligation to perform such action out of respect for the moral law. As explained by Immanuel Kant, “the moral worth of an action done out of duty has its moral worth” (105). Kant argues that to act morally, then, is to “act only on the maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” (108).

Being Free 1st draft Freedom is word used in a lot of contexts, but the official meaning of the word is “the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants” (Freedom). Meaning that you have the right to do something, with the focus being on you as an individual. This means no one can tell you what to do, like for example a state. This is an important aspect and part of political theory. Liberty is also used and viewed as the same category of theory, and has the definition “The state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s behavior or political views” (Liberty).

I chose to review the fifth chapter of “New Ideas From Dead Economists” titled The Stormy Mind of John Stuart Mill. John Stuart Mill was born in 1806 in London to two strict parents who began to educate their son at a very young age. Mill’s father was James Mill, a famous historian and economist, who began to teach his son Greek at the age of three. The book reports that “by eight, the boy had read Plato, Xenophon, and Diogenes” and by twelve “Mill exhausted well-stocked libraries, reading Aristotle and Aristophanes and mastering calculus and geometry” (Buchholz 93). The vast amount of knowledge that Mill gained at a young age no doubt assisted him in becoming such a well-recognized philosopher and economist.

1 INTRODUCTION Power and authority are the most important aspects of politics as such way of thinking comes a long way from the earliest thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle to mention few. They are the fundamental features of state in politics, focusing on who should have the power and authority over the people and who should rule them. During the time prior and after the birth of states, political authority has always been a major concern with regards to who should rule and how and who shouldn’t. Therefore this issues need to be addressed in a way that will at the end benefit the society. Plato is the thinker or theorist who came with addressing who should rule in a political environment in what Plato outlined that only Philosophers should rule.