Notes And Study Material for Exam Papers

In such a situation a humanist not merely relaxes and ignores the problem. He must call upon his studies, his philosophy, and his ancient friends, to guide him. He must grid up his soul to the vigor and tension necessary for meeting the ills of life head on. But precisely why? Montainge seems to sense that this is the weakest point in his argument. Although he says that lack of preparation costs us too much in panic and torment at death, his explanation of the frequent bravery of simple people is not convincing, and he seems to know it; for he offers it tentatively and never repeats it. He knows that common people, whole nations, even cowards, can often perform the bravest actions even without study. He does not insist on the strictest possible regime of preparation, as do those who seek our privation. He says that we may use the body to help us if the soul is not strong enough alone; that all honourable assistance against the ills of life is not only permissible but even laudabl...

Firms do not operate in a vacuum, they interact with their customers and with other firms. These interactions take place in markets and economics has developed models of markets that predict how firms will behave in certain situations. The three major markets are 1. Perfect competition, 2. Perfect monopoly, and 3. Monopolistic competition. Perfect competition is the most intense form of market interaction and though it may be intense, it is not as rare as many would have us believe. Perfect competition is characterized by the following: 1.         There are many firms selling a homogenous product. 2.         There are many buyers. 3.         There are no barriers to entering or exiting the industry. 4.         Firms in the industry have no advantage over new entrants. 5.       ...

In oligopolistic industry, there are only a few big firms which control the supply of a commodity and each firm produces a significant portion of the market. They are, therefore, mutually interdependent. In other words, we say the behaviour of the firm directly affects and is affected by the action of the rival firms. The firms under oligopoly are motivated by two opposing forces, one force moves them to co-operate with one another so that the profit of each firm are maximized. The other force takes the away from the joint profit maximizing price and profit. Under oligopoly the pricing theory is fundamentally the same with the difference that the larger the number of firms, the greater will be the differences in the marginal costs and more remote will be the possibility of collusion or agreement, whether taxeit or explicit. When they all deal in a standardized product and each is producing a considerable portion of total output, the price and output policy of each is likely to af...

Oligopoly is the market organization in which there are a few or small number of firms in an industry and they produce the major share of the market. The word ‘a few’ or small number is vague. The economists therefore refer to oligopoly as that market situation in which the number of firms is small but each firm in the industry takes into consideration the reaction of the rival firms in the formulation of price policy. The number of firms in the industry thus may be only two or more than two say 5, 10, 20. The basic condition for the existence of oligopoly is that a firm in the ‘group product’ formulate its price policies with an eye to their effects on its rivals.  There is thus a great deal of interdependence between or among the small number of firms. The oligopolistic industries are classified in a number of ways. If there are only two giant firms in an industry and they produce identical products. It is called perfect on pure duopoly. In case the goods produced by the tw...

Montainge’s early view of life was a rather Epicurean pessimism. “The wretchedness of our condition,” he was to write, “makes us have less to desire than to fear...That is why the sect of philosophy that set the greatest value on voluptuousness and raised it to its highest price still ranked it with mere freedom from pain. To have no ill is to have the happiest state of well being that man can hope for.” Though he said that he had thus far lived reasonably happily, except for the loss of his friend, this was a great exception. Moreover, his other bereavements were to contribute their share to his pessimism. Fifteen years later the mere expressions that reminded him of his grief could still revive it: “My poor master! Or, My great friend! Alas, my dear father! Or, My good daughter!” in his gloomy apprehension, he looked for security in preparation, like the healthy young men he had seen carrying pills around to take in case of a cold. As the surest way to the negative contentmen...

The religious wars, which had broken out a year and a half before La Boetie’s death, were to involve Montaigne deeply and to form the somber background of the last half of his life. There were intervals of comparative peace, some of them rather long. But they were never better than armed truces, for no settlement could satisfy both sides, and during most of them, sporadic violence continued in one part of France or another. The Protestants were never comparable in numbers to the Catholics; but these were sharply divided, with the government generally holding to a policy at first of tolerance, then of moderation, while the extremists opposed all concessions.  After three lasting each year or two, the Reformists reached their highest peak of influence when their leader Coligny came to court in 1570 and gained greater favour with King Charles IX. But the Catholics grew alarmed as Coligny pressed for armed intervention in the Protestant Netherlands against Catholic Spain. When tho...

In ordinary language, a market means a place where things are bought and sold. But in Economics a different meaning has been given to the term. Professor Chapman says “Economically interpreted the term ‘market’ refers not to a place but to a commodity or commodities and buyers and sellers of the same who are in direct competition with one another.” Thus we speak of cotton market, share market etc. There is a market for every commodity that has buyers and sellers, even though there is no specified place where they meet. All that is required to constitute a market therefore is a commodity that can be bought and sold some are willing to buy and others are willing to sell.  The buyers and the sellers can communicate with one another by words of mouth, by letter, telephone, cable, internet or by wireless, the method or place does not matter. The definition of the market points out two main features of an economic market. Firstly there must be a free competition among buyers and se...

The term Land has been given a special meaning in Economics. It does not mean soil as in ordinary speech but is used in much wider sense. It also includes all natural resources which are free gift of nature. In Marshall ’s words, “land means the materials and the forces which nature gives freely for man’s aid in land and water in air and light and heat.” Importance of Land Land in economics is a term which is often used in a wider sense. It does not mean soil as in ordinary speech. Land stands for all natural resources which yield income or which have exchange value. It represents those natural resources which are useful and scarce actually or potentially. Land is absolutely indispensable for human being and nothing can be produced without land. Land is an important factor of production and survival of human being is directly linked with land. Fertility and productivity of land is essential for economic development. The developed countries have reached the climate of econom...

In earlier times, wants were few. Each man did his own efforts and produced things he was in need of. He had his own land, his own labour and capital and thus produced the essential things. But nowadays production is highly organized and complex. The invention of machines has revolutionised the system of production. The modern process of production is very long. It is carried on with the help of hired labourers. The work for producing even an insignificant thing is now divided into a number of operations. This results in the division of labour. Each man or each group of men is engaged in performing only one particular operation. This complexity of modern production has brought the question of organization or entrepreneurship into prominence. The organizer or entrepreneur may not be a risk-taker. He is the captain of the industry. The armies of the industry can no more be raised, equipped, held together, moved and engaged without their commanders or entrepreneurs. He has to select...

Capital formation or capital accumulation means the increase of the stock of real in a country. In other words, capital formation involves making more capital goods, such as machines, tools, factories, transport, equipment, materials, electricity, etc., which are used for the further production of goods. For making an addition to the stock of capital savings investments and technical progress are essential. Capital accumulation is the very core of economic development. It may be a predominantly private enterprise system like the American one or a socialist economy like China and Cuba . Economic development cannot take place with technical progress such as the construction of irrigation works, the production of agricultural tools and equipment and reclamation, the building of dams, bridges, and factories with machines installed in them, roads, railways and airports, ships and harbors, all the produced means of further production associated with high-level productivity. In the view of...

Montaigne as a boy stands well revealed in the essay “On the Education of Children”. Independent and tenacious but slow to move, he was in danger of doing not wrong, but nothing at all-a reproach he was to hear all his life. Secure in the intelligent love of the father he loved dearly in return, he spent a boyhood generally happy but marred by his first seven years of formal education. These gave him his first real taste of folly and injustice: and from what he tells us of his mind at the time, he may well even then have judged much as he did later the inanity and severity that could come of knowledge and authority misapplied. No matter what his father did, “It was still school.” Montaigne’s Catholicism must have been the result of a real decision. When this came, we do not know, nor even just when his brother and sister-or possibly two sisters-were converted to Protestantism. But his father was presumably concerned about the matter by the time Montaigne was thirteen, for it was ...

We usually thing of Montaigne as a meditative middle-aged man, reading and writing alone in the tower of his manor. This is proper enough, for it was in his last twenty years that he wrote the Essays that make him live today. Our knowledge of the first two-thirds of his life is still tantalizingly fragmentary. There are some facts to go on most of them external and some judgments and insights, a few by his friends La Boetie, the majority by himself. Most of these need weighing as well as arranging to give a true and clear picture of young Montaigne. He was born at bright moment for French humanists and for the peaceful religious reform they sought. Inspired by Erasmus and Lefevre d’Etaples (Faber Stapulensis), they wanted mainly to know the Bible better through humanistic inquiry and make it available and understandable to all. They were bitterly attacked by the powerful conservative theologians of the Sorbonne but were protected by King Francis I, who had never liked the Sorbonn...

In studying the development of Montaigne’s thought we must not, of course, forget the element of permanence. Often he remarks on how little he has changed. “I am nearly always in place, like heavy and inert bodies,” he writes. “For the firmest and most general ideas I have are those which, in a manner of speaking, were born with me.” In himself as in others he finds a ruling pattern that successfully opposes any radical change. Many views, attitudes, and feelings of the young Montaigne were only confirmed by age and experience, Young or old, he is still Montaigne. His mental temper, for example, seems always to have been skeptical. Skeptical in the etymological sense of one who judiciously stops to look before he takes a mental leap, who considers all sides before he commits himself. Skeptical because his mind is always more sensitive to diversity than to uniformity; because nature as he sees it, has made things more unlike than like, so that all comparisons are lame and all stat...

The dull, unimaginative but honest Wagner is a parody of bourgeois pedantry. His characterization emphasizes the differences between the search after knowledge for its own sake or for worldly rewards and the search for true understanding. After Wagner departs, Faust returns to bitter thoughts about human impotence. The sight of a skull makes him think of suicide as the solution to his problems. He is about to drink a glass of poison when the pealing of church bells and the melodious singing of a choir remind him of the Easter message of resurrection and eternal life. Faust does not literally believe in these concepts, but they bring back memories of his childhood religious faith and their symbolic meaning restores his self-confidence. Martha, the neighbour, is Gretchen’s friend. At the opening of the scene she is alone,, thinking about the long absence of her husband. Gretchen runs in and tells Martha that she has found another casket of jewels, but this time has not told her...