Este trabalho investiga as relações entre a regra da maioria e o princípio do dano de John Stuart Mill. Em suma, seu objetivo é descobrir de que maneira o princípio do dano funciona como um limite à regra da maioria. Diante disso, ao longo desta dissertação, examinam-se as dificuldades enfrentadas por Mill para conciliar utilitarismo e democracia, liberdade e razão. Este trabalho analisa, também, algumas ideias permanentemente presentes na reflexão histórica sobre o liberalismo: os conceitos de liberdade positiva e liberdade negativa; os diversos conceitos de paternalismo; e as muitas críticas dirigidas à regra da maioria / This investigation studies the link between the majority rule and the harm principle by John Stuart Mill. To sum up, the purpose is to find out how the harm principle operates as a limit on majority rule. As a result, throughout this study, we examine the difficulties faced by Mill to reconcile utilitarianism and democracy, liberty and reason. This dissertation analyzes, still, some ideas that were constantly present in historical reflection about liberalism: the concept of the positive liberty and the concept of negative liberty; the various concepts of paternalism; and the many criticisms of the majority rule.

La Corse est une île qui symbolise la résistance à la tyrannie. Son histoire est faite d'une succession de révolutions (1729-69) contre les occupations génoise et française dont les périodiques britanniques se sont fait l'écho. James Boswell (1740-95), lors de son Grand Tour (1763-66), rencontre le père de la nation corse, Pascal Paoli (1725-1807), à la tête des rebelles. Il devient le chantre de la liberté pour ceux qui sont, aux yeux de l'Europe éclairée, de braves insulaires. Il commence une campagne de presse effrénée afin de faire intervenir la Grande-Bretagne dans un conflit qui n'est pas le sien. Le volume d'essais que James Boswell a édité, n'a jamais été traduit. L'étude porte sur le texte de "British Essays" et sur son contexte. La traduction et l'appareil critique concernent les vingt essais qui composent le volume. La circulation des idées et des hommes facilitent l'intérêt pour les nouvelles venant de l'étranger dans une société britannique où l'histoire est un genre noble et où la presse se développe dans ces nouveaux lieux de sociabilité que sont les cafés. On s'y adonne à la conversation, art que chacun croit maîtriser et la politique est de tous les débats. / The island of Corsica has always been the symbol of resistance to tyranny.Its history was made up of a series of revolutions against the Genoese and French settlements which made the news in the British periodicals.James Boswell(1740-95), while on his Grand Tour(1763-66), met the father of the Corsican nation, Pascal Paoli( 1725-1807), at the head of the rebels.Boswell championed the cause of liberty on behalf of those who were regarded as brave islanders by the enlightened conscience of Europe.He started a frantic press campaign so that Great Britain would interfere in a conflict it did not want to enter. The volume of essays James Boswell published has never been translated. This study is concerned with both the text of *British Essays* and its context.The translation and the critical apparatus bear on the twenty essays which make up the volume. The circulation of ideas and men fuelled the interest in foreign news in the British society where history was a lofty genre and where the press flourished in coffee-houses, those new types of places of sociability. Patrons took pleasure in conversations, an art everyone thought they mastered and politics was on everyone's lips.

During the Civil War, musical fluidity led to an outpouring of songs written about the conflict. With every popular song came at least one set of alternate lyrics known as contrafacta. In this thesis, I analyze Northern anthem “The Battle Cry of Freedom,”and Southern anthems “The Bonnie Blue Flag” and “Dixie” and their contrafacta. Through the lens of contrafacta, I analyze how the North and the South understood the terms “liberty” and “freedom.”

Rousseau and Kant were philosophers of freedom. Both believed freedom was the essence of humanity, and both believed that "freedom is self-legislation." This thesis examines what they understood to be self-legislation. According to Rousseau natural freedom was lost with the establishment of society. Society is an "unnatural" order and the true basis of society is simply convention. Man is free only if he is subject to laws of his own making, or at least to those laws to which he has consented. The ideal state, according to Rousseau, is the republic based on laws that have been created and adopted by each members of the community. It is in this sense of freedom, for Rousseau, is self-legislation. Kant believed the important issue was demonstrating the metaphysical possibility of freedom, not the reconstruction of society. Kant argued that freedom could be demonstrated, and morality reaffirmed, by focusing on the 11 ought" of reason. The 11 ought 11 transcends the physical world and was a pure law of reason. It is not subject to the physical laws of causality. Man has the ability to act according to this law of reason. Man is transcending the physical realm, and the physical laws of nature, whenever he makes a moral decision based on what he 11 ought 11 to do, or whenever he puts duty before his physical desire. This, Kant argues, is self-legislation, and only here may man hope to be free.

Many researchers and political experts have commented on the disenfranchisement of the citizenry caused by irresponsible use of power by the government that potentially violates the 4th Amendment rights of millions of people through secret mass surveillance programs. Disclosures of this abuse of power are presumably protected by the 1st Amendment, though when constitutional protections are not followed by the government, the result can be prosecution and imprisonment of whistleblowers. Using a critical autoethnographic approach, the purpose of this study was to examine the devolution of democratic governance and constitutional rights in the United States since 9/11. Using the phenomena of my signature indictment (the first whistleblower since Daniel Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act) and prosecution by the U.S. government, data were collected through interviews with experts associated with this unique circumstance. These data, including my own recollections of the event, were inductively coded and subjected to a thematic analysis procedure. The findings revealed that the use of national security as the primary grounds to suppress democracy and the voices of whistleblowers speaking truth to, and about, power increased authoritarian tendencies in government. These tendencies gave rise to extra-legal autocratic behavior and sovereign state control over the institutions of democratic governance. Positive social change can only take place in a society that has robust governance and social structures that strengthen democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, and do not inhibit or suppress them.

Esta tese trata da noção de direitos que informa o pensamento político dos colonos e líderes revolucionários na América britânica do século XVIII. Derivada de uma visão de mundo influenciada por fontes e tradições diversas, essa noção combina, de forma inusitada, duas escolas do pensamento jurídico; ambas herdadas de uma longa tradição. A primeira se baseia nos direitos históricos dos súditos ingleses na América, derivada do constitucionalismo inglês; a segunda é claramente inspirada na doutrina dos direitos do homem, formulada pela escola do direito natural moderno. A tese central deste trabalho é que a afirmação dos direitos e liberdades fundamentais do homem no Novo Mundo não se dá pela substituição absoluta de um paradigma por outro, mas pela conjunção das duas tradições jurídicas, coexistindo no pensamento colonial. Essa combinação contribuiria mais tarde para a formulação de um modelo republicano democrático liberal constitucionalista inovador. Contudo, esse modelo inovador não foi uma criação ex-nihilo. Os colonos e líderes revolucionários não abandonaram as tradições, as doutrinas e os princípios herdados, mas souberam combiná-los, articulá-los, modernizá-los e adaptá-los às exigências e às circunstâncias de um Novo Mundo e de um novo tempo. Vale sempre lembrar a grande contribuição que esse trabalho ofereceu para a formulação posterior dos direitos humanos e do direito internacional público. / This thesis deals with the notion of rights that informs the political thought of colonists and revolutionary leaders from the 18th century British America. Derived from a world view influenced by distinct sources and traditions, this notion unexpectedly combines two schools of legal thought; both inherited from a long tradition. The first one is based on the historical rights of English subjects in America, derived from English constitutionalism; the second one is clearly inspired by the doctrine of the rights of man postulated by the modern natural right school. The central thesis of this paper is that the affirmation of the fundamental rights and liberties of men in the New World is not through the absolute replacement of one paradigm by another, but by the conjunction of the two legal traditions coexisting in colonial thought. This combination would later contribute to the formulation of an innovative constitutional liberal democratic republican model. However, this innovative model was not an ex-nihilo creation. Colonists and revolutionary leaders did not abandon their inherited traditions, doctrines, and principles, but they knew how to combine, articulate, modernize, and adapt to the demands and circumstances of a New World and a new time. It is always worth remembering the great contribution that this work has made to the subsequent formulation of both human rights and public international law.

Qu’est-ce que la liberté chez Spinoza ? Comment la démontre-t-il dans l’Ethique ? Le point de départ de la réflexion est d’examiner le rapport entre l’esprit et le corps chez Spinoza et de démontrer comment cette forme de relation rend possible le projet de libération de l’homme établi par Spinoza dans l’Ethique. Or, le projet de libération de l’homme chez Spinoza commence par une libération de l’homme de sa vie affective. Ainsi, il faut examiner le fondement ontologique des affects pour les expliquer dans le même ordre causal qui détermine le corps et l’esprit. Mais, Spinoza n’envisage pas seulement de répondre à la question du mystère existentiel qui concerne la réalisation de notre liberté dans l’existence, mais aussi de fonder une liberté d’ordre métaphysique, pour établir son fondement ontologique de la vie affective humaine. L’analyse consistera à démontrer que la conception du conatus est essentielle pour la conception nouvelle de la liberté que propose Spinoza. Car, le conatus est la manifestation dans l’existence de la détermination de chaque être de la nature par une cause nécessaire et immanente qui est Dieu. C’est donc à titre d’hypothèse qu’est travaillé le lien entre la conception spinoziste de la liberté et la réalisation de notre conatus dans l’existence. / What is liberation according to Spinoza? How does he demonstrate it in his work Ethics? A jumping off point for answering that question is to examine the relationship between mind and body in Spinoza, and demonstrate how the nature of that relationship makes the liberation of man possible as established by Spinoza in Ethics. Incidentally, the project of a man's liberation in Spinoza begins with the liberation of man from his affective life. Thus, we must examine the ontological basis of man's emotions in order to explain them in the same causal order that determines body and mind. But Spinoza does not only seek to answer the question of the existential mystery behind the realisation of our existential liberation, he also seeks to pave the way towards a metaphysical liberation, to lay the ontological foundation for the emotional life of man. This analysis will consist of demonstrating that the concept of conatus is essential to the new concept of liberation as espoused by Spinoza. Here, conatus is the manifestation of a necessary and immanent cause, which is God, in the existence of the determination of every being in nature. Thus, the hypothesis at work here is the link between Spinoza's concept of liberation and the realisation of our existential conatus.

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<p>The purpose of this paper is to understand why education is a human right. I will look at works by the late Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator. Paulo Freire worked for many years on developing a pedagogy to promote humanity. His goal was to demonstrate that a literate person will ultimately live a better life because she will be free from oppression and domination.</p><p>I chose to study Paulo Freire as a tool in proving why education is a human right because throughout his work he demonstrated the need for people to be literate in order for them to be considered “truly human”. I will address this term further in my argument.</p><p>This thesis is a work in progress. My goal is to include chapters illustrating Amartya Sen’s theory and ideology, and compare them to those of Freire’s. I would also like to include a chapter specifically dedicated to women and education, since it is common practice for women in many countries to sacrifice their right to education so the males in their families can attend school.</p>

This thesis aims at answering the following questions:1) How can the existence of a state be justified?2) To what extent does the state have the right to restrict individual´s liberty of action?3) To what extent does the state have the right to restrict or redistribute any kind of "goods", and if so, which restrictions should be allowed on which"goods"?4) Can a moral theory be "goal-directed", and are there moral reasons that it should be "goaldirected"? In order to answer these questions, I will analyze Robert Nozick´s and Michael Walzer´s answers to these questions, as presented in Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974) and Spheres of Justice (1983). My answers, which are founded on an argument for the necessity of freedom of choice and ambition-sensitivity in theories of justice, are results of a compromise between the ideas in these theories, but also partially on criticism of both theories.