Modern Political Thought Midterm Exam Religion & Theology Essay

Rewrite of mid-term exam, with article title, mainly using the content in the book

October 16, 2019
Midterm Exam
General Instructions:
For this exam, you are to write two essays, selecting from among the topics provided (see below).
In completing this exam, you may consult the assigned texts, or any of your own notes. Electronic devices of any kind are not permitted.
You are expected to need no more than approximately 2 hours for the entire exam; however, you are welcome to take additional time, to the end of the scheduled class session.
Topics
The topics provided for this exam take the form of brief passages quoted from the assigned texts. You are to choose one from each of the two groups (A and B) as the topics of your two essays. Each essay should elucidate the meaning of the quoted passage in relation to the author’s immediate point, and should also address its significance or implications within the author's thinking considered more broadly. You are welcome to develop your argument with reference to ideas of one or more of the other authors we have read, but you are not required to do so. You are also welcome to offer your own critical assessments, but take care not to allow this to interfere with communicating your understanding of the texts or the arguments they contain. Bear in mind that these passages have been selected to give you the opportunity to demonstrate your mastery of texts in which the arguments are often complex, subtle, and ill-served by reductive simplifications.A.
1. ‘It is for no particular item in the tax-bill that I refuse to pay it I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually. I do not care to trace the course of my dollar, if I could, till it buys a man or a musket to shoot one with — the dollar itself is innocent — but I am concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance. In fact, I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make what use and get what advantage of her I can, as is usual in such cases.* Thoreau, 'Resistance to Civil Government" (p. 6 of handout).2. 'The more conditions become equal, and the less men are individually strong, the more they easily let themselves go with the current of the crowd and have trouble holding alone an opinion that it has abandoned.' Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 2, Pt. 2, ch. 6 (trans. Mansfield & Winthrop, p. 495).3. 'Our contemporaries are incessantly racked by two inimical passions: they feel the need to be led and the wish to remain free. Not being able to destroy either one of these contrary instincts, they strive to satisfy both at the same time. They imagine a unique power, tutelary, all powerful, but elected by citizens. They combine centralization and the sovereignty of the people. That gives them some respite. They console themselves for being in tutelage by thinking that they themselves have chosen their schoolmasters.... It is in fact difficult to concieve how men who have entirely renounced the habit of directing themselves could succeed at choosing welF those who will lead them.' Tocqueville. Democracy in America, Vol. 2, Pt. 4. ch. 7 (trans. Mansfield & Winthrop. pp.664-5).

B.1. "Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that It does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.” Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto (section II).2. 'The working class did not expect miracles from the Commune. They have no ready-made utopias to introduce par décret du peuple ['by decree of the people'].... They have no ideals to realize, but to set free the elements of the new society with which [the] old collapsing bourgeois society is already pregnant." Marx, "The Paris Commune” (The Civil War In France, part 3).3. "While consciousness of nationality is a relatively recent development, the structure of the state was derived from centuries of monarchy and enlightened despotism. Whether in the form of a new republic or of a reformed constitutional monarchy, the state inherited as its supreme function the protection of all inhabitants in its territory no matter what their nationality, and was supposed to act as a supreme legal institution. The tragedy of the nationstate was that the people's rising national consciousness interfered with those functions.... The conquest of the state by the nation was greatly facilitated by the downfall of the absolute monarchy and the subsequent new development of classes.... [In] a century when every class and section in the population was dominated by class or group interest the interest of the nation as a whole was supposedly guaranteed in a common origin, which sentimentally expressed itself in nationalism.” Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, ch. 8, p. 230.4. 'The great danger arising from the existence of people forced to live outside the common world is that they are thrown back, in the midst of civilization, on their natural givenness, on their mere differentiation.... The danger in the existence of such people is twofold: first, and more obviously, their ever-increasing numbers threaten our political life, our human artifice, the world which is the result of our common and co-ordinated effort.... The [second] danger is that a global, universally related civilization may produce barbarians from its own midst by forcing millions of people into conditions which, despite all appearances, are the conditions of savages." Arendt The Origins of Totalitarianism, ch. 9, p. 302.