Filipino Student Essays

There was a time when mankind lived in a “state of nature” without any ruling body governing them. There were no laws implemented thus the citizens either enjoyed unlimited freedom or lived in fear. As a result, these men entered into an agreement, a ‘social contract’, to form a political society for order to take place. There are five prominent philosophers who tackled about this social contract: Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume. Grotius anchored his principles on the idea that every individual had natural rights which enabled self-preservation and acted as a basis for moral consensus. But, there’s a delineation of those rights because everyone was entitled to try to preserve himself. He stated that with a natural law accepted by all, even if we were to concede what we cannot concede without the utmost wickedness, these laws would still hold. This proposed that power could go back to the individuals if the political society they build f...

      During the time of Great Depression in 1929, the world suffered an enormous economic problem. Along with this historical event, two economists became popular: John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich von Hayek. Both significantly influenced and grabbed the limelight in the field of economics. But the most interesting part here is their ideas are opposite to each other.         One of the principal reason of Hayek is in line with how financial crisis takes place. He disapprove of Keyne’s idea that financial crisis is caused by deregulation or little government interference, and free market. As for him, it results from too much regulation. He consider the primary instigators or causes of economic imbalance as excessive interventions in the “natural” market place. His argument is opposite to Keynes’ proposition that government must interfere strategically to economic activities, especially when it is experiencing a downturn. For Keynes, this action o...

Karl Marx is considered as one of the most influential philosophers. It all started when he published The Communist Manifesto in 1948 and Das Kapital in 1867-1894. His arguments were anchored on the criticisms of capitalism and of the emergence of communism following its collapse. Karl Marx's major criticisms took its roots from the concepts of class struggles and inequality, injustice exploitations and alienation of labor. In the case of class struggles, he pointed out that in a capitalist society there are two main classes: the capitalists or bourgeoisies, and the workers or the proletarians. He also expressed disapproval on the idea that the state or the government in a capitalist society do not interfere in the affairs of the economy. He stated that those who are elected to a certain position are the capitalists. The capitalists dominated both the political and economic affairs of the state. As a result, they promulgated and implemented rules in line with their indi...