Philosophy exam If you could all

[Angry Young Man]

Yeah my exams on 22/6 (6/22) and on Political Philosophy and On Liberty.

A few things I am struggling with are:

Social Contract theories
Philosophy of law (Hart, Dworkin and Finnis)
Clash between lib and equ.

There's probably more, but those are the main ones I'm having trouble with.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Have you done any searches on the web??

[Idola Mentis]

What sort of social contract theories? All of them?

[Janus]

For future reference, all academic/class help threads belong in here.

[Angry Young Man]

Originally posted by Idola [email protected] 23, 2007 01:35 pm
What sort of social contract theories? All of them?
I think Hobbes, Rawls, Rousseau.

I may be able to scratch that one, but I just can't do philos of law. It's boring as fuck! All I know is that I have a loose support for Austin.
I dunno it's probs just cos it's more bureacratic.

[Idola Mentis]

Ow, each of those are big subjects. All I can remember about Rawls is one aspect of this theory of justice. The veil of ignorance or something like that - meaning that when setting up a society, the organizers should not know what position they will occupy in the system they set up?

Rosseau's the one I think I could give the most useful answers about and refer sources to.

EDIT: for starters, stanford encyclopedia is your friend. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/austin-john/

[Hegemonicretribution]

Anything more specific? I mean rough guides can be found on line, but details can be done here if you give a few hints....

I am not too sure what exactly you mean by philosophy of law (as distint from political?)..could you pose an example question? Is it in reference to existing statute law? Are questions likely to allow you to deal with authority, sub cultures...lots of things you could do in a more genersal essay....or is it specifically about function..or formation...anything?

Feel free to PM with issues surrounding contract theorists at least, all though Rawles I am only acquainted with..

By clash between liberty and equ(ality?) do you mean political dissent, or more specifically the implied incompatability that one would solve to suggest that there isn't a clash? Assuming the latter you should be able to gather enough from covering a couple of the contract theorists to be able to blag questions around this...Marxism can obviously be worked in here, unless it is a very specific class....which doesn't sound like philosophy.

I have a 9am exam on philosophy of dissent and war tomorrow actually...so I shall leave this here for now.

[Episteme]

If you would like to read about one of the first instances of social contracts I recommend the platonic dialogue Crito. It is fairly short and has some decent reasoning.