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:
“So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in this history of the globe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The custard is setting; meanwhile
I not only have my own history to worry about
But am forced to fret over insufficient details related to large
Unfinished concepts that can never bring themselves to the point
Of being, with or without my help, if any were forthcoming.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“We may pretend that we’re basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”
—Terry Hands (b. 1941)