Thomas Paine Analysis

This further leads to the characters offering a confession subconsciously to make them feel responsible for their immorality. All of this is displayed through the ominous and rather supernatural character of Inspector Goole. Priestley uses the Inspector as a projection of his views on socialism to indicate its superiority over capitalism. The Inspector described the individuals of community as “members of one body”. This implies that unity within a community is essential for its survival which confronts the Birling’s view of absolute capitalism.

He challenges the Kantian ideology of deontology and its connection with it actually being moral. He wanted to understand the origins of these morals and wanted to weaken the current human values and restyle the way morality is viewed. This led Nietzsche to his Genealogy of Morals which is divided into the noble morality that differentiates between good and bad and slave morality that differentiate between good and evil. He sides with noble morality since; it is an unconstrained affirmation of oneself as “good” and once this happens the rest is considered as bad. On the other hand, the slave morality was a reaction to the dominant noble morality, where it denounces its oppressors as “evil” and then declares oneself as well based on the choice of punishment taken (Nietzsche, 1994, p. 12-15).

Swinburne first writes of the “freewill defense” which is because of the ability for human beings to choose morality there is good and evil within the world (Swinburne, pg.83). The author objects to the freewill argument. The first main argument by Swinburne which is the response if God is omnipotence or with unlimited power why could not he just restrict our morality to good characteristics in his likeliness? (Swinburne, pg.83-84) The second argument in “Is There a God?” which adds to the first argument is could God have dwindled our ability to be evil and granted us greater goodness while still maintaining freewill? (Swinburne, pg.84) Theist would disagree.

In “The Prince,” Machiavelli discusses the terms and procedures he believes a prince should take to govern his society. Many perceive his views on human nature and leadership as evil and cruel towards his people. He justifies his views on human nature as he draws examples from the tactics and traits of successful leaders from the past. His ideas are comprised from justifying the means of his actions by its ends. Machiavelli selects the aspects of admirable historical figures to produce and describe his ideal prince.

Justice is a defining factor of human motivation—it can result in the triumph or demise of a person’s actions. Nevertheless, justice is not only the blade that separates good from evil, but it is the adhesive that cements all of humanity together to form an overall gluttonous species. In the midst of injustice, both works by Martin Luther King and Sophocles question the rule of political law over moral law through civil disobedience, yet their purposes and outcomes differ from one another. Sophocles emphasizes the consequence of resistance to political rule in Antigone’s search for moral justice, while King depicts the racist cause behind his opposition to social injustice. In Antigone, Antigone portrays the suffering that comes from the consequences

Whereas ethics are the "values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions". (Gavai 2009, 14) From my understanding economics is a foe of ethics mainly because everyone is a psychological egoist, this is where individuals act in manner that is only in their best perceived material self-interest. As a result, it seems that it would be very difficult to have any ethical standards in place, mainly due to the fact that ethics requires individuals to act against our own material self-interest. In Norman Bowie's book Economics, Friend or Foe of Ethics, he mentions that ethics would be pointless if psychological egoism is true. Bowie's approach is based on a "moral point of view that requires an individual to do the right thing, even if it is not in one's perceived best interest".

While the two lived and wrote at the same time, contributing to the founding of the United States; the differential weight they carried in terms of their literature was vital to the Declaration. In Paine 's Common Sense, he begins to argue the case of American independence from Great Britain. Paine also has the notion of government being a necessary evil, keeping the vices of man in check. He argues the hereditary succession is bad; man being born into a world of equality. Paine states that hereditary succession brings incompetent kings, corruption, and civil

As Jefferson goes on, he explains that when the American nation feels that these natural rights have been violated by a leader that it is their duty to secede from that particular power and institute the government that will better serve them. In this paragraph, we see two various forms of rhetorical devices including parallelism and allusion. Parallelism can be seen when the document states, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The word “that” is what makes the sentence parallel since it is repeated to ensure the sentence flows smoothly, as well as making emphasis on what is self-evident. Secondly, we see again the use of allusion when a reference to “their Creator” is mentioned. Again, the reference to God is a figure that both the American and British citizens hold in high regard as the document is stating that their are certain rights men are “endowed”

The primary is that the power of the government depends on upon the assent of the government. Secondly, justice is superior to the laws that are ordered by the government, and the individual has the right to judge whether the given law reflects or denies justice. In the second case. The individual has the obligation to defy the law and accept the outcomes of the disobedience peacefully. For Thoreau’s situation, he judged that the laws, maintaining slavery and support Mexican war were unfair.

Hobbes’ belief that human beings are selfish and appetitive is antithetical with Locke’s contention that human beings are intrinsically moral even in the state of nature, which results in Locke’s strong disagreement with Hobbes’ proposed absolute monarchy. Firstly, an absolute monarchy as proposed by Hobbes would require that people relinquish their own rights and to submit to one absolute power, which Locke feels is counterintuitive his understand of humans in the state of nature. A distinctive feature of Locke’s state of nature is perfect freedom for people to carry out their own wills without hindrance. Hence, Locke’s main critique of Hobbes’ absolutism is that people living under a Hobbesian