POLS 250 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Cardinal Virtues, Robert Nozick, A Letter Concerning Toleration

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Political Studies
• Course: POLS 250
• Professor: Colin Farrelly

Document Summary

Instrumental value: valued for other things it does lead to job money more things. Intrinsic value: something that is valued for its own sake. It is a normative, rather than descriptive endeavour. It is primarily concerned with how we ought to live together. As such it invokes political concepts and ideals (freedom, equality, authority, democracy, etc) to help us evaluate the legitimate functions of government. 3 approaches to political thought: history of political thought context of the thinker, political ideologies link important thinkers together (liberals, socialists, conservatives, political philosopher combine concerns from 1 and 2, but central aim is evaluative. Sparta: oligarchy (ruled by the few) and a military state. Citizens trained to be soldiers and it was a static society that resisted change (conservative) Plato: the sophists were arrogant, shallow and promoted dangerous ideas. Democracy was vulnerable as the masses could be swayed by those who pretended to have (but actually lacked) knowledge and wisdom.