<p> The emphasis in the thesis is on demonstrating the absolute primacy of freedom (autonomy) in Rousseau's thought. The intention of the thesis is to suggest some of the problemmatic 'irreconcilables' inherent in any attempt to construct a political theory within the constraint of the primacy of freedom. This emphasis and intention is attempted through analysis of the concluding paragraphs of the Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts in relation to the Contrat Social and the Emile.</p> <p> The actual thesis of the thesis is formulated to reflect the primacy of freedom in Rousseau's thought and is stated as follows: The concluding paragraphs of Rousseau's first Discoursedelineate a paradigm within the context of which Rousseau will later formulate his political projection, the Contrat Social, and his educational projection, the Emile. The terms 'paradigm' and 'projection' are used advisedly within the context of their centrality to modern thought. While recognizing that Rousseau did not use these terms in their evolved sense, the conceptual framework out of which they developed may be found in Rousseau's thought, particularly within the concluding paragraphs of the first Discourse.</p> <p> Part I of the dissertation explores the paradigm outlined in the concluding paragraphs of the first Discourse. Specifically, Chapter I explores Rousseau's concept of freedom in relation to nature as manifest in the state of nature and human nature. Freedom is related to independence (vis-a-vis other men) and free-agency (vis-a-vis nature) and these two components form the basis for a typology of freedom that will be used throughout the thesis: natural freedom, misused freedom, and radical freedom. Chapter II examines Rousseau's historical perspective and his account in the first Discourse of the devolution of natural freedom into misused freedom (exercise of negative free-agency and loss of independence). Chapter III discusses Rousseau's concept of 'art' in order to further elucidate his concept of freedom and to reconcile Rousseau's praise of science in the concluding paragraphs with his attack on the arts and sciences earlier in the Discourse. Chapter IV contrasts the art of thinking', which Rousseau condemns, with the great science of Bacon, Newton and Descartes. Rousseau's designation of these men as the 'precepteurs du Genre-humain' , his description of the nature of their thought, and his demand that they be bound only by their own hopes, all demonstrate the extent to which Rousseau understood the relationship between freedom and projection that was to characterize modern thought. Chapter V identifies three types of virtue in Rousseau's thought (all of which are contrasted with the 'art of manners' attacked in the first Discourse): innocent virtue emanating from the primary goodness of man, political virtue based on the horizon of patriotism and religion, and autonomous virtue which is a type of self-legislation. Innocent virtue is simulated in Emile by the tutor and political virtue is established in the citizens by the legislator, whereas autonomous virtue characterizes those who are capable of exercising radical freedom. </p> <p> In Part II, Chapter VI summarizes the paradigm outlined in Part I to serve as the basis for analyzing Rousseau's political and educational projections. Chapter VII explores the relationship between the legislator, who is identified as a 'precepteur du Genre-humain', that is, as one capable of exercising radical freedom, and the citizens of the general will state. This relationship is seen as a manifestation of the distinction Rousseau makes at the conclusion of the first Discourse between 'deux grands Peuples; que l'on savoit bien dire, et l'autre bien faire'. Chapter VIII parallels Chapter VII, by viewing the Emile as Rousseau's own projection within the context of the paradigm found in the first Discourse, particularly in the assignation of the tutor as a 'precepteur du Genre-humain' and in his relationship to Emile. Throughout my analysis, the emphasis is on demonstrating the primacy of freedom in all areas of Rousseau's thought: freedom for Rousseau is both the highest philosophic principle and the fundamental fact of human existence; it is the primacy of freedom that characterizes man's original condition, his fundamental desire and fundamental right; it is freedom that is the root and end of the just society. </p> <p> In this emphasis on the primacy of freedom in Rousseau's thought, the thesis makes a signficant contribution to Rousseauan scholarship by providing a new perspective on the overall unity and consistency of Rousseau's thought, while, in a broader context, using Rousseau as the medium for exploring those irreconcilables which have become endemic to modernity's attempts to think together the exaltation of freedom (autonomy) as the highest good with the exigencies of political order.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

TITLE: The Impact of Institutions on Economic Growth.MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Wanki Moon. Based on the cross-sectional data, my thesis examined the relationship between the Economic Freedom Indices and per capita GDP. This thesis demonstrates that the rule of law category, which includes the property right variable, is the category that most affects per capita GDP which demonstrates the importance of the institution. Data from 184 countries published by Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal were used. I analyzed the data using the OLS regression model to explore the relationship between Economic Freedom index and per capita GDP. The first model I analyzed is simple regression which regress economic freedom indices on per capita GDP. The result of the regression showed that all variables are significant, except the Tax Burden and Fiscal Health variables which were insignificant. The Government Spending and Tax Burden are the only variables have a negative effect on per capita GDP. The second model I analyzed was multiple regression for each category’s components, then I repeated the model four times, since there are four different categories with three components each. It is important to analyze each category by itself to explore what the relationship is between the component in each category and per capita GDP. The results of regression on each category including the three different components show that government integrity (from the rule of law category), government spending and fiscal health (from government size category), business freedom (from regulatory efficiency category), trade freedom and financial freedom (from open market category) are significant variables and affected per capita GDP positively except for government spending which has a negative effect on per capita GDP. On the other hand, the variables which are insignificant like property right from the rule of law category, monetary freedom from regulatory efficiency category have a positive effect on per capita GDP. But the Judicial Efficiency from the rule of law category, tax burden from government size, labor freedom from regulatory efficiency category and investment freedom from open markets are insignificant and have a negative effect on per capita GDP. However, when we look to the category as a group, we find that all four grouped index freedom is significant at 99% significant level. R-square is highest for rule of law category (68%) and very low for government size (16.7%). The third model I used includes four categories by computing the average of each category’s components, we found, by looking at R-square, that 65.4% of per capita GDP is explained by these four categories. Surprisingly, I found that the rule of law category is the only significant variable with positive effect on GDP per capita. On the other hand, Government Size, and Regulatory Efficiency are insignificant variables and have a negative effect on per capita GDP. Open Market category is insignificant variable and has a positive effect on per capita GDP.

Thesis advisor: Marius Stan / This thesis explores America's Opioid addiction crisis through a philosophical lens, arguing for a need to adopt a national mandatory rehabilitative approach for the sake of maintaining our country's cultural ethos grounded in freedom and the subsequent capacity to flourish as a human being. It proceeds in four chapters: the development of our cultural ethos through an analysis of John Locke and J.S. Mill, the history of the opioid addiction crisis and development of the two dominant addiction theories, America's current measures to tackling the crisis, and the proposal of a new approach that recovers addicts' freedom and ability to flourish. The work concludes by arguing for the importance of using philosophical principles and interpretations to guide problem solving and tackling current crises. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Philosophy.

The economic prosperity of a nation is a complex function of many factors, including its culture, geography, history, legal origins, ethnolinguistic fractionalization, resource endowment, leadership and religious homogeneity. However, economic prosperity is most robustly related to the quality of a nation’s institutions under which its resources are put to productive use. Institutions are the humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic and social interactions. Fundamental economic institutions, like property rights and the rule of law, structure the incentives that affect a nation’s productivity. Since at least the early 1990’s, economists have quantified economic institutions and policies by aggregating economic policy variables into economic indexes. Of these indexes, the most popular is the Economic Freedom of the World, which measures the consistency of a nation’s institutions with the principles of economic freedom. After decades of study, we know that economic freedom is positively related to income, gender equality, civil liberty and happiness among other desirable economic outcomes. Despite the benefits of simplifying institutions into a single number, the implicit assumptions required to do so are costly. By summarizing institutional quality as a single quantity, scholars assume that the underlying institutional structure of two economies are identical as long as their summary scores are identical. This assumption is often false, and this research examines the costs of this assumption for modeling economic growth. The common methodology for measuring institutional quality ignores both institutional volatility and institutional imbalance. This research shows that both measures are robustly and negatively related to economic growth rates. Therefore, models that simply a nation’s institutions to a single value at a single period of time are assuming away valuable information that helps explain a nation’s prosperity or lack thereof. In addition to examining the costs of these false assumptions, this research also examines the institutional trends among U.S. states since 1981. Despite declining economic freedom in the United States relative to other nations, state and local governments in the United States are liberalizing in recent decades. This phenomena is driven by increasing labor market freedom among states.

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