Thomas P. Peardon

Bio: Thomas P. Peardon is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Early Modern English & State of nature. The author has an hindex of 2, co-authored 4 publications receiving 1716 citations.

The second treatise of government

Abstract: Born in 1632, John Locke was an important figure in both British and American politics; indeed, there are few, if any, philosophers who were more influential in the development of American political institutions and beliefs than John Locke. Locke's father was a politically influential lawyer who supported Oliver Cromwell and the British Parliament against King Charles 1. John Locke was sent to Oxford at fifteen, where he became friendly with noted chemist Robert Boyle as well as other scientists, all of whom exerted an important influence on young John. After graduation, Locke served as a tutor in Greek. Then, after serving a period as a diplomat, he returned to Oxford to study medicine. Locke was active throughout his life in political and public affairs. At one point he was forced into exile by the king, but he returned to England after the Glorious Revolution in 1688. He died in 1704 at the age of seventy-two. Locke's influence is evident, among other places, in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. In his First Treatise of Government, Locke attacks the divine right of kings; in the Second Treatise, from which the following selection is taken, he addresses the legitimate role of government together with the limits on governmental power. Locke begins by imagining persons in a state of nature in which each is independently pursuing his or her own interests. In that situation, he argues, people possess natural moral rights to life, property, and liberty, rights that are not to be transgressed by others. Given the realities of such a state of nature, it is in the interests of people to move to~rd cooperation and trade and to establish common institutions to provide protection of life and property. Governmental action is severely limited, however, by people's natural rights-a topic to which he devotes considerable attention. Locke also considers the related and important question of how a previously unowned resource may justly become the property of one person.

Trust: the connecting link between organizational theory and philosophical ethics

Abstract: Numerous researchers have proposed that trust is essential for understanding interpersonal and group behavior, managerial effectiveness, economic exchange and social or political stability, yet according to a majority of these scholars, this concept has never been precisely defined. This article reviews definitions from various approaches within organizational theory, examines the consistencies and differences, and proposes that trust is based upon an underlying assumption of an implicit moral duty. This moral duty—an anomaly in much of organizational theory—has made a precise definition problematic. Trust also is examined from philosophical ethics, and a synthesis of the organizational and philosophical definitions that emphasizes an explicit sense of moral duty and is based upon accepted ethical principles of analysis is proposed. This new definition has the potential to combine research from the two fields of study in important areas of inquiry.

Capabilities as fundamental entitlements: Sen and social justice

Abstract: Amartya Sen has made a major contribution to the theory of social justice, and of gender justice, by arguing that capabilities are the relevant space of comparison when justice-related issues are considered. This article supports Sen's idea, arguing that capabilities supply guidance superior to that of utility and resources (the view's familiar opponents), but also to that of the social contract tradition, and at least some accounts of human rights. But I argue that capabilities can help us to construct a normative conception of social justice, with critical potential for gender issues, only if we specify a definite set of capabilities as the most important ones to protect. Sen's "perspective of freedom" is too vague. Some freedoms limit others; some freedoms are important, some trivial, some good, and some positively bad. Before the approach can offer a valuable normative gender perspective, we must make commitments about substance.

Social Capital and Democracy

Abstract: Social capital is in danger of going the way of political culture—a potentially powerful concept that is given many different meanings by many different people for many different purposes. This article starts by picking out three different aspects or dimensions of the concept—norms (especially trust), networks, and consequences. It then considers three models of social capital and the forms of trust and democracy associated with them. Finally it discusses the role of voluntary associations as a foundation for social capital, arguing that their importance may be overstated in the classical Tocquevillean model of the 19th century, and that, in any case, modern democracy may be increasingly based on different forms of trust and association.

Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority under a Tree outside Delhi, May 1817

Abstract: There is a scene in the cultural writings of English colonialism which repeats so insistently after the early nineteenth century-and, through that repetition, so triumphantly inaugurates a literature of empire-that I am bound to repeat it once more. It is the scenario, played out in the wild and wordless wastes of colonial India, Africa, the Caribbean, of the sudden, fortuitous discovery of the English book. It is, like all myths of origin, memorable for its balance between epiphany and enunciation. The discovery of the book is, at once, a moment of originality and authority, as well as a process of displacement that, paradoxically, makes the presence of the book wondrous to the extent to which it is repeated, translated, misread, displaced. It is with the emblem of the English book-"signs taken for wonders"-as an insignia of colonial authority and a signifier of colonial desire and discipline, that I want to begin this essay.