Human rights violation regents essay

There is now near-universal consensus that all individuals are entitled to certain basic rights under any circumstances. These include certain civil liberties and political rights, the most fundamental of which is the right to life and physical safety. Human rights are the articulation of the need for justicetolerancemutual respect, and human dignity in all of our activity.

Life and Influences a. Early Life and Influences Adam Smith was born in June,in Kirkcaldy, a port town on the eastern shore of Human rights violation regents essay the exact date is unknown. His father, the Comptroller and Collector of Customs, died while Smith's mother was pregnant but left the family with adequate resources for their financial well being.

Young Adam was educated in a local parish district school. Inat the age of thirteen he was sent to Glasgow College after which he attended Baliol College at Oxford University.

His positive experiences at school in Kirkcaldy and at Glasgow, combined with his negative reaction to the professors at Oxford, would remain a strong influence on his philosophy. In particular, Smith held his teacher Francis Hutcheson in high esteem. One of the early leaders of the philosophical movement now called the Scottish Enlightenment, Hutcheson was a proponent of moral sense theory, the position that human beings make moral judgments using their sentiments rather than their "rational" capacities.

According to Hutcheson, a sense of unity among human beings allows for the possibility of other-oriented actions even though individuals are often motivated by self-interest. The moral sense, which is a form of benevolence, elicits a feeling of approval in those witnessing moral acts.

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Hutcheson opposed ethical egoism, the notion that individuals ought to be motivated by their own interests ultimately, even when they cooperate with others on a common project. The term "moral sense" was first coined by Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesburywhose work Smith read and who became a focal point in the Scots' discussion, although he himself was not Scottish.

Although Shaftesbury did not offer a formal moral sense theory as Hutcheson did, he describes personal moral deliberation as a "soliloquy," a process of self-division and self-examination similar in form to Hamlet's remarks on suicide.

This model of moral reasoning plays an important role in Smith's books. The Scottish Enlightenment philosophers, or the literati, as they called themselves, were a close-knit group who socialized together and who read, critiqued, and debated each other's work.

They met regularly in social clubs often at pubs to discuss politics and philosophy.

Shortly after graduating from Oxford, Smith presented public lectures on moral philosophy in Edinburgh, and then, with the assistance of the literati, he secured his first position as the Chair of Logic at Glasgow University.

His closest friendship in the group—and probably his most important non-familial relationship throughout his life—was with David Humean older philosopher whose work Smith was chastised for reading while at Oxford. Hume was believed to be an atheist, and his work brought into question some of the core beliefs in moral philosophy.

In particular, and even more so than Hutcheson, Hume's own version of moral sense theory challenged the assumption that reason was the key human faculty in moral behavior. He famously asserted that reason is and ought to be slave to the passions, which means that even if the intellect can inform individuals as to what is morally correct, agents will only act if their sentiments incline them to do so.

An old proverb tells us that you can lead a horse to water but that you can't make it drink. Hume analogously argues that while you might be able to teach people what it means to be moral, only their passions, not their rational capacities, can actually inspire them to be ethical.

This position has roots in Aristotle 's distinction between moral and intellectual virtue. Smith, while never explicitly arguing for Hume's position, nonetheless seems to assume much of it.

And while he does not offer a strict moral sense theory, he does adopt Hume's assertion that moral behavior is, at core, the human capacity of sympathy, the faculty that, in Hume's account, allows us to approve of others' characters, to "forget our own interest in our judgments," and to consider those whom "we meet with in society and conversation" who "are not placed in the same situation, and have not the same interest with ourselves" Hume: In this book, he embraces Hume's conception of sympathy, but rejects his skepticism and adds, as we shall see, a new theory of conscience to the mix.

However, focusing on Hume's observations also allow us to see certain other themes that Smith shares with his Scottish Enlightenment cohort: For Hume, this epistemology would bring into question the connection between cause and effect—our senses, he argued, could only tell us that certain events followed one another in time, but not that they were causally related.

For Smith, this meant a whole host of different problems. He asks, for example, how a person can know another's sentiments and motivations, as well as how members can use the market to make "rational" decisions about the propriety of their economic activity.

At the core of the Scottish project is the attempt to articulate the laws governing human behavior. Smith and his contemporary Adam Ferguson are sometimes credited with being the founders of sociology because they, along with the other literati, believed that human activities were governed by discoverable principles in the same way that Newton argued that motion was explainable through principles.

Newton, in fact, was a tremendous influence on the Scots' methodology. In an unpublished essay on the history of astronomy, Smith writes that Newton's system, had "gained the general and complete approbation of mankind," and that it ought to be considered "the greatest discovery that ever was made by man.

Smith describes it as "the discovery of an immense chain of the most important and sublime truths, all closely connected together, by one capital fact, of the reality of which we have daily experience" EPS, Astronomy IV.

While Smith held the chair of logic at Glasgow University, he lectured more on rhetoric than on traditional Aristotelian forms of reasoning. There is a collection of student lecture notes that recount Smith's discussions of style, narrative, and moral propriety in rhetorical contexts.

These notes, in combination with his essay on astronomy, offer an account of explanation that Smith himself regarded as essentially Newtonian. According to Smith, a theory must first be believable; it must soothe anxiety by avoiding any gaps in its account.

Again, relying upon a basically Aristotelian model, Smith tells us that the desire to learn, and the theories that result, stems from a series of emotions: This leads to understanding and admiration of the acts and principles of nature.

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By showing that the principles governing the heavens also govern the Earth, Newton set a new standard for explanation. A theory must direct the mind with its narrative in a way that both corresponds with experience and offers theoretical accounts that enhance understanding and allow for prediction.

The account must fit together systematically without holes or missing information; this last element—avoiding any gaps in the theory—is, perhaps, the most central element for Smith, and this model of philosophical explanation unifies both his moral theories and his political economy.In , Paul Graham wrote How To Disagree Better, ranking arguments on a scale from name-calling to explicitly refuting the other person’s central point..

And that’s why, ever since , Internet arguments have generally been civil and productive. Graham’s hierarchy is useful for its intended purpose, but it isn’t really a hierarchy of disagreements. Current issues dealing with the government and political situation in Ethiopia, as well as human rights, freedom of the press and the future of Ethiopia and its people.

Adam Smith (—) Adam Smith is often identified as the father of modern capitalism.

Letters are published every Tuesday and Friday.

While accurate to some extent, this description is both overly simplistic and dangerously misleading. plagiarism Plagiarism is defined as quoting or paraphrasing text from another author without both (1) the indicia of a quotation and (2) a proper bibliographic citation.

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Freedom of Speech. Schenck v United States (). Charles Schenck was arrested for violating the Espionage Act, passed by Congress in The Espionage Act made it illegal to defame the government or do anything that might retard the war effort.