...Introduction Bureaucracy today is an integral part of most modern organizations. Whether public or private, organizations all across the world implement systems and regulations in their daily procedures which are enforced by appointed employees. Although bureaucracy has existed in some form or another for hundreds of years in human society, our point of departure will be the definition presented by Max Weber. In short, Weber defined bureaucracy as an organizational system with a clearly defined chain of command, where employees set aside their own personal opinions in favor of neutrality and impartialness. Rules are clearly defined and followed, to ensure the elimination of nepotism and the employee is required to adhere to the orders of their superiors who in turn have to operate under the structure and rules of the organization (Weber, 1946). When looking at how bureaucracy is used and implemented across the globe, it is clear that there are huge differences in how efficiently organizations and governments are being run, despite the fact that they are all working within a bureaucratic structure. In this paper we will look at public administration and question whether or not the bureaucratic ideal of the impersonal worker is still valid today. Is the strict adherence to regulations and formalities a concept which is no longer needed in our modern society? Traditional bureaucracy To many, bureaucracy is seen as a very stringent and almost soulless system, which does...
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...Response Paper Thomas Hobbes was born in London in 1588. After his father’s early death Hobbes was raised by his uncle. Thomas Hobbes received his education at Oxford University in England. As the scene was being set for the Civil Wars ‘’Civil war meant that the country became militarily divided.’’ all divisions cut across one another for this reason Thomas Hobbes felt forced to leave the country for his personal safety. Then he lived in France from 1640 to 1651. In this point we can easily understand that social and political chaos affected Hobbes’s life and shaped his thought, but it never prevented his intellectual development. His early position gave him to read, write and publish. On the other hand Thomas Hobbes also likes travelling that’s why he traveled to other European countries several times. While he travelling he meet with other scientists. In 1651, Thomas Hobbes wrote his most famous work which was name is Leviathan. His main concern is the problem of social and political order. First one is how human beings can live together in peace and avoid the danger and fear of civil conflict. He believed that humans were basically selfish. They would do anything to better their position. Left to themselves, he thought, people would act on their evil impulses. According to Hobbes, people therefore should not be trusted to make decisions on their own. On the other hand if we look at Thomas Hobbes’s point of view about human nature we can say that; his view is a pessimistic...
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...Slide 1 - Ideology founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority. - advocates limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, individual liberties including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets Slide 2 Liberalism started as a major doctrine and intellectual endeavour in response to the religious wars gripping Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, up until the cold war • Liberalism as a specifically named ideology begins in the late 18th century as a movement towards self-government and away from aristocracy. It included the ideas of self-determination, the primacy of the individual and the nation, as opposed to the family, the state, and religion, as being the fundamental units of law, politics and economy. • Liberalism first became a powerful force in the Age of Enlightenment, rejecting several foundational assumptions that dominated most earlier theories of government, such as nobility, established religion, absolute monarchy, and the Divine Right of Kings. • The first notable incarnation of liberal unrest came with the American Revolution, and liberalism fully flowered as a comprehensive movement against the old order during the French Revolution, which set the pace for the future development of human history. SLIDE 3 • The early liberal thinker John...
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...HUM 112 Week 2 Discussion 10/20/2014 "The Arts and Royalty; Philosophers Debate Politics" Please respond to one (1) of the following, using sources under the Explore heading as the basis of your response: * The philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke disagreed on the understanding of political authority, with Locke taking what is commonly called the “liberal” view. Choose a side (be brave perhaps; take a side you actually disagree with). Using the writings of each given in our class text or at the Websites below, make your case for the side you chose and against the other side. Very briefly, identify one (1) modern situation in the world where these issues are significant. Philosophers Debate Politics * Chapter 24 (pp. 768-9) * Hobbes: text at http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/hobbes/leviathan-contents.html; summary at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-moral/; also http://jim.com/hobbes.htm * Locke: text at http://www.thenagain.info/Classes/Sources/Locke-2ndTreatise.html; General background of the concept at http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/teachers/lesson_plans/pdfs/unit1_12.pdf The philosopher that I mostly agree with is John Locke. Locke expressed radical views of government. He thought that government is honestly required to serve the people by protecting their life, rights and property. He believed in having checks and balances to limit the power of government. He criticized a nation under cruel and oppressive government and...
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...Is War Primarily the Product of ‘Human Nature’? It is too great a task to identify a common cause of all wars, past and present, then attribute it responsibility for their commencing. However, what can be done is to identify certain foundations common in all “war”, and pay heed to how “states [or other structures] actually behave, behind the façade of their values-based rhetoric” (Kaplan, 2012, p.1). It will be this essay’s goal to determine first, what needs be included in the definition of “human nature”, and what constitutes “war”, and second, stake the claim that all political action, including that of states, is derived primarily from this definition of human nature. The first task is to define what is meant by “war”, and while definitions abound, it is possible to order them into one of two categories supplied by the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. The first is the modern conventional view, that war is “the state of armed conflict between nations or states” (Oxford, 2007, p.3573), and the second, considerably broader, of “any active hostility or struggle between living beings” (Oxford, 2007, p.3573). The former accounts well for conflicts that were overwhelmingly state-centric, such as the First World War, and marks a clear distinction between war and individual political violence: war is the business of states. However, is the Vietnam War to be understood—like the Korean—as a simple north versus south conflict, despite the northern state only assuming active involvementnine...
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...War of Independence or a Revolution? It should be understood that without understanding the causes, course, and consequences of the American Revolution, one cannot grasp the history of the United State. The American Revolution was the political commotion during the end of the eighteenth century. The thirteen North American colonies united to break free of the British Empire and become a new nation; The United State of America. A revolution can be defined as, the change in power or the constitution stirring in a relatively short period of time. Aristotle described revolution as complete change from one constitution to another (Sinclair 190). And this is precisely what happened two centuries ago in the United State. But the question needed to be answered is, was the American War of Independence really a war for independence or a revolution? The American War of Independence (1775–1783) was a climax in the political American Revolution rather than just a war for independence, ideologically influenced by the Enlightenment philosophers and writers of the Great Britain. Benjamin Rush remarked in 1787, "The American war is over, but this is far from being the case with the American Revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the great drama is closed." 2 This drama staged in the Pennsylvania State House in summer of 1776 remains the only most important chapter in the archives of American Revolution. Although, the political atmosphere in France...
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...Writing Assignment 2 Why does Hobbes think that, without the state, life would be ‘nasty, brutish, and short? Assumptions about politics do change tremendously over the course of history. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) worried by the happenings is England during the English Civil War, thought human beings started to behave as if in a state of nature, a state of war. In his work Leviathan he illustrated how unpleasant life would be like in state of nature and without an operating state hoping to convince his readers of the benefits of a government. The book greatly promotes the essentiality of a strong central authority to avoid the revolting disagreement and civil war. This paper will illustrate Hobbes’s contribution to the principles of liberal...
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...ularism Modern Myths, Locked Minds by T. N. Madan Introduction: Scope, methods and Concepts 1. Secularization, secularism, Christian tradition and the Enlightenment: a brief history T. N. Madan differentiates between secularism, secularization and secularity. 1) Secularization refers to socio cultural processes in which the role of the sacred is progressively limited; 2) Secularism is the ideology that argues for the historical inevitability and progressive nature of secularization everywhere and 3) Secularity is the resultant state of society. The term "secularism" was first used by the British writer Holyoake in 1851 to describe his views of promoting a social order separate from religion. The English word ‘secular’ comes from the Latin ‘saeculum’, which means ‘an age’ or ‘the spirit of an age’ and has the same meaning as the Greek ‘aeon’. In general terms, secularism means “belonging to this age, or worldly” along with a denial of other worldly realities (i.e. religious). The Bible introduces the idea of divine creation in the book of Genesis. God speaks directly to Man in Genesis: “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it”. As Peter Berger, a social theorist notes that in this the idea of a secular world is sown as a God who stands outside of the Cosmos which is his creation. This opens the way for self making activity which Berger calls ‘historization’. Caesar was the emperor of Rome. In a famous passage Jesus said, "Render to Caesar the things...
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...cases reflect “unmet needs for contraception” which, if used, could have prevented unwanted pregnancies. While the RH framework identifies contraception as a necessary solution in the equation, the Church finds it problematic. It is in this perspective that the fundamental proposals in the bill are deemed immoral. The Church has gathered its forces to show its resistance to the proposal. The resistance has reverberated in many local churches in different parts of the archipelago. The local resistance offered by the Roman Catholic Church is now shared by the evangelical churches, and Islamic believers. These church communities in the country have used every means possible to disarm the threat provided by this proposal. In response to this political and religious dilemma, this paper describes how the current debate between the Philippine Church and legal proponents on the proposed Responsible Parenthood Bill in congress is anchored on three problematic attitudes and presuppositions that have served to hinder the resolution of the case. The first is the belief in the separation of the Church and State. The second is the...
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...However, men break these rules and do acts of evil, like murdering each other. In “Leviathan,” Hobbes comments, despite have a king or a government, men still have a “continual jealously and have their weapons pointing and their eyes fixed one another” (123). God created the Ten Commandments for humans to follow in order to be good. If we broke these set of rules we would be dammed to Hell for doing these evil acts against God. One of those commandments were “thou shall not kill.” However, that did not stop Adolf Hitler from killing millions of European Jews. In “Was Hitler a Christian?” Robertson reports that Hitler grew up in the Catholic Church. He was baptized as a baby; later in adolescences served as an altar boy and at one point considers priesthood (1). Despite having knowledge of these rules from God and other rules from...
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...In Conjunction with History of Ethics Instructor: Robert Cavalier Teaching Professor Robert Cavalier received his BA from New York University and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Duquesne University. In 1987 he joined the staff at Carnegie Mellon's Center for Design of Educational Computing (CDEC), where he became Executive Director in 1991. While at CDEC, he was also co-principal in the 1989 EDUCOM award winner for Best Humanities Software (published in 1996 by Routledge as A Right to Die? The Dax Cowart Case). He also coauthored the CD-ROM The Issue of Abortion in America (Rountledge, 1998) Dr. Cavalier was Director of CMU's Center for the Advancement of Applied Ethics and Political Philosophy from 2005-2007. He currently directs the Center's Digital Media Lab which houses Project PICOLA (Public Informed Citizen Online Assembly), and is also co-Director of Southwestern Pennsylvania Program for Deliberative Democracy. Co-Editor of Ethics in the History of Western Philosophy (St. Martin's/Macmillan, England, 1990), Editor of The Impact of the Internet on Our Moral Lives (SUNY, 2003) and other works in ethics as well as articles in educational computing, Dr. Cavalier is internationally recognized for his work in education and interactive multimedia. He was President of the "International Association for Computing and Philosophy" (2001 - 2004) and Chair of the APA Committee on Philosophy and Computers (2000-2003). Dr. Cavalier has given numerous addresses and...
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...SOCI 1301 Final Exam Review The final exam will cover chapters 1-16 and in class lecture notes. Theorists: Robert K. Merton Erving Goffman Karl Marx Ferdinand Tonnies Theoretical Perspectives: Structural Functionalism Conflict Theory Symbolic Interactionism Matching: Match the following key words with the definitions below. a. Corporate Crime b. Social construction of reality c. Socialization d. Culture e. Culture Shock a. Norms b. Social Control c. Subculture d. Popular Culture e. Cultural Transmission a. Ethnocentrism b. Family c. Status d. Ascribed Status e. Achieved Status a. White Collar Crime 1. __CULTURE___ is the values, beliefs, behavior, and material objects that together from a people’s way of life 2. __CULTURE SHOCK____ is the personal disorientation when experiencing an unfamiliar way of life. 3. __CULTURAL TRANSMISSION___ the process by which one generation passes culture to the next. 4. __NORMS____ are rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of its members. 5. ___SOCIAL CONTROL__ is the attempt by society to regulate people’s thought and behavior 6. The term______ refers to cultural patterns that set apart some segment of society’s population. 7. ___POPULAR CULTURE___designates cultural patterns that are widespread among a society’s population. 8. __ETHNOCETRISM____ is the practice of judging another culture by the standards of one’s own culture. ...
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...R outledge Revision: Questions & Answers Jurisprudence 2011–2012 Each Routledge Q&A contains approximately 50 questions on topics commonly found on exam papers, with answer plans and comprehensive suggested answers. Each book also offers valuable advice as to how to approach and tackle exam questions and how to focus your revision effectively. New Aim Higher and Common Pitfalls boxes will also help you to identify how to go that little bit further in order to get the very best marks and highlight areas of confusion. And now there are further opportunities to hone and perfect your exam technique online. New editions publishing in 2011: Civil Liberties & Human Rights Commercial Law Company Law Constitutional & Administrative Law Contract Law Criminal Law Employment Law English Legal System Routledge Q&A series Equity & Trusts European Union Law Evidence Family Law Jurisprudence Land Law Medical Law Torts For a full listing, visit http://www.routledge.com/textbooks/revision R outledge Revision: Questions & Answers Jurisprudence 2011–2012 David Brooke Senior Lecturer in Law and Module Leader in Jurisprudence at Leeds Metropolitan University Fifth edition published 2011 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the U S A and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2011...
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...obligation,” and they are presently engaged in lively debate not only with the skeptics but also with one another on the question of which theory, if any, provides the solution to the problem. Whether political obligation is the central or fundamental problem of political philosophy, as some have maintained (e.g., McPherson), may well be doubted. There is no doubt, however, that the history of political thought is replete with attempts to provide a satisfactory account of political obligation, from the time of Socrates to the present. These attempts have become increasingly sophisticated in recent years, but they have brought us no closer to agreement on a solution to the problem of political obligation than the efforts of, say, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke in the seventeenth century. Nor have these sophisticated attempts made it unnecessary to look back to earlier efforts to resolve the problem. On the contrary, an appreciation of the troublesome nature of political obligation seems to require an...
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...[Please do not circulate or cite without permission] Written Constitutions and Unwritten Constitutionalism Mark D. Walters Faculty of Law Queen’s University February 2007 To Be Published In: Grant Huscroft (ed.), Expounding the Constitution: Essays in Constitutional Theory (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) I. Introduction Defending the idea of ‘unwritten law’ has never been easy. Jeremy Bentham thought the very expression to be a ‘paradoxical and unmeaning epithet’.[1] In his view, social reform required ‘fixed and accurate’ laws—laws that ‘[w]e see, we hear, we touch; in short we handle…’[2] This empirical concept of law follows from the ideal of law as something produced by conscious acts of sovereign will. Central to this concept are, to use H.L.A. Hart’s expression, ‘rules of change’ that permit societies to escape the confines of ‘primitive’ custom.[3] The progressive march of legal theory, it may be said, has been away from medieval notions of law as customs practiced time out of mind or as the immutable dictates of natural law, away from the fiction that judges discover rather than make law, and towards modern notions of law as creative political acts recorded in writing. In terms of constitutional law, this march leads to the idea of written constitutionalism, a destination that the rebelling American colonists are often said to have reached first.[4] It was a task especially ‘reserved’ to the American people, wrote...
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