SOCI 330 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Alexis De Tocqueville, For Marx, Montesquieu
Document Summary
Pay attention to a series of rules produced by philosophers. Sense of looking at the context within thinkers work. John locke wrote a lot about property, therefore this is possessive individualism, therefore it is a theory of capitalism. This was wrong about locke because of the context and the meaning locke had in real time. He was christian and property meant that all human beings possess property in the eyes of god (all humans are equal) Look at context to understand the meaning of the term the person is using. You have to try and work out when thinkers are describing the world, and when they are prescribing the way the world should be. Thinkers are big in the sense they have ideas about social development. Where we"re going, where we came from. Ideas about what is a good v. what is a bad world. Looked at human history and says there is a progression from stage to state.