History
Henry James Sumner Maine proposed that social structures evolve from roles derived from status to those based on contractual freedom. A status system establishes obligations and relationships by birth whereas a contract presumes that the individuals are free and equal. Modern libertarianism such as that advanced by Robert Nozick sees freedom of contract as the expression of the independent decisions of separate individuals pursuing their own interests in a "minimal state."
Read more about this topic: Freedom Of Contract
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
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“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)