POT 3302 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Night-Watchman State, Louis Hartz, Classical Liberalism

• School: University of Florida
• Department: Political Theory
• Course: POT 3302
• Professor: O

Document Summary

Commonly, people say: "liberalism" and liberals" are terms that refer to the. Or: democrats are liberals" and republicans are conservatives". As a form of political ideology liberalism didn"t start in the 1960s 2ith events like woodstock. In fact, liberalism was a much earlier revolutionary force than jimi hendrix and it broke apart the assumptions of both the classical and feudal worlds in the west. Politics and the political world are artificial, not natural (vs. For many liberals (thought not all) there is therefore a pre-political state, often referred to as the state of nature . The appropriate unit of political concern is the individual, not the polis or. Individuals free and equal (verses the great chain of being ) Free and equal individuals in the state of nature are possessed of natural rights, either determined purely by reason (thomas hobbes, 1588-1679) or via reason as a means of understanding natural law/god"s law (john locke,