Ghana and the Social Contract :: aristotle, family, values, communities

Aristotle rightly said that the family is the building block of the society and each family has its common values and preferences. Even though individuals may belong to the same family and society, they would have diverse opinions on what the society should be and where it should be headed. Even in the face of shared values by a society, there is another discriminant of individual’s value systems- their experiences. These experiences make them masters of themselves because they assume that their experiences are unique to only them and therefore these views should be recognized as valid. James O’Toole categorised the value systems of individuals under the four major themes of community, efficiency, liberty and equality (O'Toole, 1995). This paper reflects on the good society and its constituents in the light of these four themes. O’Toole believes these four are the great themes of political argument which face trade-offs with each other and have an inverse relati onship with each other, that is, an increase in one causes a decrease of the other. Thomas Jefferson considered the good society to be a society in which everyone was happy and I agree with that because happiness is the end product of various favourable factors in a person’s life. Furthermore, I am of the same view that a good society is one that ensures the rights of every member of the society. This is because every human being is innately self-seeking and this is evident in a child’s selfish efforts to attain his or her wants in spite of being young in knowledge of the society. Even though humans can be selfless, their basic needs should at least be met because the satisfaction of their needs sustain them and ensures their contentment. To ensure basic rights of individuals, it is essential to know which value they hold dear, whose fulfilment would bring them long lasting pleasure, thus, leading into the exploration of these major core values. Liberty is concerned with freedom of the individual in three spheres, which are in politics, religion and economics and this value births individuals who are known as libertarians. The modern Libertarian principle that these individuals operate by is that â€Å"the equal right to freedom constitutes the full extent of human equality; all other equalities are unwarranted and unjust† (O'Toole, 1995). Thus, libertarians support every kind of liberty which includes economic liberty hence, capitalism. As such they believe that government interventions in the free market stifle economic progress.