Oxford University Press | Online Resource Centre

Choose your answer by clicking the radio button next to your choice and then press 'Submit' to get your score.

Question 1

Which of these is not usually seen as a constraint upon freedom?

a) Imprisonment.

b) Suppression of peaceful political dissent.

c) The inability to fly without mechanical aid.

d) The total prohibition of alcoholic stimulants and tobacco products.

Question 2

What does the idea of 'positive liberty' mean?

a) The state has the right to intervene in the hope of making people's lives more fulfilling.

b) People should just get out there and do whatever they want.

c) Only self-confident people can be free.

d) Freedom means the absence of constraints deliberately imposed by other people.

Question 3

Isaiah Berlin argued that...

a) the state can and should do more to reduce economic inequalities.

b) the criminal justice system is an unacceptable infringement of freedom.

c) irrational people do not deserve freedom.

d) 'positive' conceptions of liberty represented a serious threat to freedom.

Question 4

What did John Stuart Mill argue?

a) Freedom is an essential means to human progress.

b) Hurtful opinions and nasty name-calling should be stamped out by the law.

c) All kinds of pleasure are equally valid.

d) People should forcibly be prevented from harming themselves.

Question 5

Mill's 'harm principle' can be criticized because...

a) human beings are not necessarily made happier just because the law allows them ample freedom to make serious mistakes.

b) It is not clear that any significant human action is purely 'self-regarding'.

c) There are circumstances when the truth needs to be given legal protection against error.

d) all of the above.

Question 6

What does procedural justice entail?

a) A fair distribution of income and wealth.

b) An assurance that punishment should fit the crime.

c) That decisions should be made in accordance with an established set of rules.

d) That every offender should be tried in front of a judge and jury.

Question 7

In John Rawls's theory, principles of justice are established by people who are affected by what?

a) A veil of ignorance.

b) A state of nature.

c) Economic inequality.

d) Short-sighted self-interest.

Question 8

Rawls's theory is vulnerable to criticism because...

a) it gives undue priority to liberty over equality.

b) it seems to presuppose an affluent society rather than one which would be affected by serious scarcity.

c) it overlooks the possibility that people in the 'original position' will enjoy taking risks.

d) all of the above.

Question 9

An important difference between Robert Nozick's ideas and those of Rawls is that...

a) Nozick admires capitalism whereas Rawls rejects it.

b) Rawls is more concerned with individual liberty.

c) Nozick believes that people who acquire property through their labour should be allowed to keep it, while Rawls tries to justify a degree of redistributive taxation.

d) Nozick is more willing to justify state intervention.

Question 10

According to the communitarian conception of justice...

a) the same rules should apply in all societies.

b) justice means different things in different contexts.

c) Western countries have a moral duty to intervene in 'rogue' states.

d) the concept of the nation state is meaningless in a world of global citizenship.

Oxford University Press, Online Resource Centre, Chapter 4.

Chapter 4

Instructions