Blog 5

     1. By looking at the picture Aristotle would have considered the government to be a democracy instead of an oligarchy considering how many people were pictured. Aristotle described a democracy as a government governed by the will of the majority. Although it can be questioned as to if he thought it was an oligarchy considering an oligarchy is ruled by essentially rich people. Aside from considering the government, I don't think Aristotle would have the painting documented like that. He would've thought of the impact the signing of the Declaration of Independence had on the United States and thought it should be more private.

      2. Considering the picture, there are three elements of society used. The first would be social due to how many people they included in the signing. The second would be Intellectual because that was how they chose who would get to sign the Declaration. The last is Political because it had to be high ranked people from each state. 

      3. I kind of touched this title in number 1. I personally think Aristotle would consider the government to be a democracy. Simply based on how many people were in the picture and not knowing anything about the men who signed. Considering if Aristotle learned more about who the people were. He could consider it an oligarchy based on their rank in society and could consider those in the front to be those overseeing everything.

      4.  After doing research, I discovered they were all well respected men in their country. Also each of the men who signed were wealthy land owners. Which proves back in their time and still today, when the more you have the better you look to society.

5. Tocqueville wrote about his observations in Democracy in America  For these reasons, Aristotle is worth reading. The two thinkers shared a number of ideas in common.  Both believed that the soul consisted of rational and non-rational parts. Both maintained that the good society was one in which the rational part of the soul prevailed in the organization of human affairs. Aristotle developed a different concept of rationality, which led him to different conclusions about the nature of the good society.

Blog 4

I believe Martin Luther King, Jr. and Thoreau's beliefs were very similar. Thoreau was strongly against violence and thought evil should be resisted and MLK Jr wanted a nonviolent war. It seems very possible that MLK could have read Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience." Which could have encouraged him to do what he did.

Cicero explains how justice and injustice are just ideas that have come from all over the world. People are honest and moral because of the values of where they live and not a God given virtue. 

Blog 3

     Thoreau saw little value in government, instead he argued that it rarely proved itself useful and that it only had power because the majority of people allowed it, it does not have any power on its own. Thoreau believes that a just government would allow its people to listen to their own moral code when determining whether to listen to government, but the current government of his time was not like this and tried to force people to fight in the Mexican War. Thoreau's government still resembles our government today because they both still do not allow people to follow their own moral obligations. 

     The Mexican American War was a war between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. The war was considered to be an unjust war because it was started by America annexing Texas. This angered the Mexicans, who had lost a civil war with Texas and still wanted to gain it back. President Polk sent troops rushing into parts of Texas and build forts on land that Mexico did not even consider Texas. President Polk wanted this war to complete "Manifest Destiny", which was the belief that America could stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and Mexico stood in the way of this. His reasons for starting this war were not ethical as he wanted to fight the war in over to take land from Mexico.