Political thought pick a question

p What is political philosophy Political philosophy , or political theory , as it is also known , is about human condition , or

what humans are like . Political theory is an attempt to understand people , what we are

like as individuals , what society and the state are like , and how we as humans , the state

and society all interact with one and other A group of elite theorists developed Plato 's idea of the philosopher-kings ' and the

ordinary folk in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries . Three of these theorists , Vilfredo

Pareto

, Geatano Mosca , and Robert Michels , all argued that for either psychological or

organisational reasons , the many had to be led by the few . If we look at the modern

bureaucratic state this theory does seem to make sense . To run the state a very high level

of technical knowledge would be required , as only the brightest people should be in

charge of it and run it

John Locke put forward his answer to the kind of state that people needed , in his book

Two Treatises on Government ' in 1689 . Locke was the founder of Liberalism . He

proposes that the state of nature would be uncertain , although it would not be anywhere

as bad as the Hobbesian state of war . This is because , according to Locke , even if there is

no state to control us , then there is still God , he will give us a natural law , with natural

rights . Locke therefore justifies revolution we can reject the state safe in the knowledge

that God will protect us . The authority of the sate rests upon consent we can accept or

reject it . For Locke the state 's job is to protect our natural rights these are the rights to

life , liberty and estate , which Locke terms collectively as property . If the state were

to act in such a way that we felt that our rights had been undermined then we can

withdraw consent and reject the state . Locke 's theory asks each of us as individuals to

consent to state authority . If the majority of people consent to the state then the state will

hold legitimate authority . Therefore Locke justifies a majoritarian democracy

Jean-Jacques Rousseau put forth his answer in the Discourse of the Arts and Science (1750 , the Discourse on Inequality , and the Social Contract (1762 . Rousseau

argues that people are naturally strong he envisages the state of nature as a kind of

paradise . 1 Individuals would not be bound to each other by any kinds of ties instead they

would be able to wander the forests content with meeting others occasionally to procreate

Rousseau believed that in the state of nature people would have the important attribute of self-love . 2 This self-love takes up two forms , the first , amour de soi-meme (roughly

translated as self-confidence , and the second amour propre (translated as vanity . In

Rousseau 's state of nature self-confidence would be required , for example to go out

hunting for deer , and as society develops people naturally begin to compare themselves

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