Difference Between Classical Liberalism And Existentialism

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Rights pertain to the individuals’ responsibilities that they have to one another. The rights refer to the power within which individuals are entitled to make choices without interference by others. Therefore, rights serve as constraints on the actions of other people. Rights exist because people act on their own interests. Rights also limit the permissible actions the government may take to interfere with the actions of individuals. A Classical Liberal and an Existentialist both speak of individual responsibility and its meaning; however, they are referring to very different concepts. A classical liberal refers to individual responsibility as self-interest whereas an existentialist refers to individual responsibility as the individual in…show more content…
The individual is the best judge of their own interest, other people should not force them to do things they do not want to do. Therefore, the individual responsibility would refer to self-interest; “[a man`s] independence is or right absolute…over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign” (203). In classical liberalism, the individual is more important than the collective society and every individual deserves respect. A classical liberal, in this case John Stewart Mill would say that that government should intervene in order to prevent someone from doing any harm to others (directly or indirectly), but he thinks that government has no business intervening to protect individuals from any harm they may be doing to themselves, it is their individual responsibility whether or not their actions and their decisions harm themselves and they have the right to do those actions until they are in the position where they could potentially harm other; “ the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself”(206). Individual responsibility would also include the individual being held accountable for his actions when they do cause harm to
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