Free Activities and Interpersonal Relations

ISBN-13: 9789024703159 / Angielski / Miękka / 1966 / 122 str.

C. W. Cassinelli

Opis

Social scientists have become increasingly aware that their work de pends upon adequate concepts of certain basic relationships among the people who comprise polities, economies, and societies. Government and politics, in particular, appear to consist almost exclusively of re lationships of power, influence, control, authority, leadership, coercion, persuasion, and manipulation. Even the most common and elementary statements of political science - that, for example, the Rio Grande is part of the boundary between Mexico and the United States and members of Congress are chosen in competitive elections - cannot be clear and unambiguous without the use of precise concepts of power and control. The subject matter of the political scientist also appears to raise more questions of evaluation than the economist and sociologist are required to resolve. Questions about the best form of government have always been central to political thought, and recent challenges to the theory, appeal, and suitability of democracy have evoked many at tempts to justify it. This attention to evaluation has inevitably involved the perennial issue of human freedom, and although political scien tists have written much about the desirability of freedom, they have only infrequently attempted to analyze the concept of freedom."

Spis treści

1 Ideas of Freedom in Common Sense and Philosophy.- I. Commonsense Usages of “Free” and “Unfree”.- II. Commonsense Ideas of Moral Responsibility.- III. Philosophical Theories of Freedom.- IV. Freedom of Choice and Freedom of Action.- 2 The Freedom of Human Activities.- I. “Activities” and “Impediments”.- II. Physical Unfreedom.- III. Unfreedom at Gunpoint.- IV. Unfreedom and the Criminal Law.- V. Economic and Social Unfreedom.- VI. Ignorance and Unfreedom.- VII. Psychological Unfreedom.- VIII. Summary.- 3 Influence, Control, and Power.- I. Basic Meanings of “Influence,” “Control,” and “Power”.- II. The Exercise of Influence.- III. The Exercise of Control.- IV. Varieties of Control and Influence.- V. The Possession of Influence and Control.- VI. The Possession of Power.- VII. Summary.- 4 Authority.- I. The Exercise of Authority.- II. Being an Authority.- III. Authority Without Results.- IV. Authority and Freedom.- V. Summary.- 5 Leadership and Government.- I. Leading and Following.- II. The Functions of the Governor.- III. Control, Influence, and the Criminal Law.- IV. Freedom and Government.- V. The Authority of the Governor.- VI. The Legitimacy of the Governor.- 6 The Philosophical Foundations of Freedom, Control, and Influence.- I. The Human Agent.- II. Human Activities.- III. “Resulting” and “Being Correlated”.- IV. The Interpretation of “Probability P”.