SOPHIE WEBB'S WORDS

SOPHIE WEBB'S WORDS

Tuesday 24 January 2012

Cobbett, Dickens, Rousseau, Smith & Kant

Cobbett
Cobbett was the son of a gamer/inkeeper. He was in the army between 1784-1791 however was forced to flee to America due to military corruption. he began his career as a journalist publishing 14 volumes of attacks on American democracy and becoming known as Peter Porcupine. He returned to England 1800 and published a weekly newsletter - Political Register in 180. He was deeply conservative and supported labourers riots in 183, leading him to be tried for sedition but acquitted. He was elected to parliament in 1832 but died in 1835.


His famous work was 'rural rides' which contained his travel writing consisting of mainly Hampshire. Throughout the book, Cobbett’s main concern seems to be that of the people. He describes some of the remaining workers as “walking skeletons”, suggesting that when farmers became gentleman, their labourers became slaves. He was anti radical and thought that industrialisation would destroy the traditional ways of life that the loved. When he came back from the army he was shocked at how ruined the countryside had become. He was also against the corn laws tax which meant tax was added to all imported grains as he believed this was unfair on the workers. The public campaigned for parliamentary reform and Cobbett supported this which lead him to serving two years in jail. The Government were afraid that riots would occur so they introduced the Reform Act in 1832.


Dickens
Dickens started out working as a parliamentary reporter but was disappointed with Parliament as he believed the poor were entitled to decent homes and education. He claimed that the State only involved themselves if it criminalised or imprisoned them. Dickens appeared to be more successful with his campaign for change in the cities than Cobbett as he was trying to move things forwards compared to Cobbett who was trying to move them back. Both Dickens and Cobbett were the fathers of modern journalism particularly campaign journalism that allowed them to give voices to the voiceless people.


Rousseau
Rousseau had a powerful influence on philosophy, literature and politics who was the father of Romanticism.He felt that mankind was better of in a state of nature and was unhappy wit land ownership. Rousseau was similar to Cobbett as he too was against industrialisation and mechanisation. He believed in natural beauty as he was interested in the nobel savage and how they lived outside of society. Cobbett was successful however Rousseau would have liked to take things further such as banning the land ownership altogether and allowing the people to freely work the land as they wish. He was also for the General Will that suggested everyone puts their power to the sovereign of the will that acts as an association creating a moral and collective body called the State. This was his answer to the fact that he believed there needed to be an association who could defend and protect peoples and their goods whist allowing them to remain as free as before.


Smith
Adam Smith on the other hand would have disagreed with Cobbett. This was due to the fact that Cobbett campaigned for the course of farming to be dealt with whereas Smith was a believer in the free market and decided that if it led to industrialisation then this is what happened. He also wrote a book called the Wealth of Nations 1776 that discussed the nature and causes of different nations and their wealth. It argues that free market economies are more productive and beneficial to their societies.


Kant
Kant was the founder of German idealism. The most important book was the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) to prove that although none our knowledge can transcend experience it is in part a priori and not inferred inductively from experience. 


Analytic Proposition is where the predicate is part of the subject, 'a tall man is a man'. Synthetic proposition is not analytic as it is based on experience such as 'it was raining on Tuesday'. Empirical proposition is where we cannot know except by the help of sense perception such as observational data. A priori proposition is elicited by experience and is known to have basis other than experience. An example of this is that a chid learning arithmetic may be helped by experiencing 2 marbles and 2 other marbles and observing altogether there are 4. However once he knows that 2+2=4 he no longer requires that conformation.


In Kant’s view, the main feature that gives an action moral worth is not the outcome that is achieved by the action, but the motive that is behind the action. And the only motive that can endow an act with moral value, he argues, is one that arises from universal principles discovered by reason.  The categorical imperative is Kant’s famous statement of this duty: “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”

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