English 12 - Mr. Rinka Lesson #25 John Locke V Thomas Hobbes

John Locke

John Locke John Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704), widely known as the Father of Classical Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following

the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social contract theory. His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to

classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence. Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such as Hume, Rousseau and Kant. Locke was the first to define the self through a

continuity of consciousness. He postulated that the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa. Contrary to pre-existing Cartesian philosophy, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception.

Social Contract In political philosophy the social contract or political contract is a theory or model, originating during the Age of Enlightenment, that typically addresses the questions of the origin of society and the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual. Social

contract arguments typically posit that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the ruler or magistrate (or to the decision of a majority), in exchange for protection of their remaining rights. The question of the relation between natural and legal rights, therefore, is

often an aspect of social contract theory. Locke believed that natural rights were inalienable, and that the rule of God, therefore, superseded government authority; and Rousseau believed that democracy (self-rule) was the best way of ensuring the general welfare while maintaining individual freedom under the rule of

law. Locke believed that individuals in a state of nature would be bound morally, by The Law of Nature, not to harm each other in their lives or possession, but without government to defend them against those seeking to injure or enslave them, people would have no security in their rights and would live in fear. Locke argued that individuals would

agree to form a state that would provide a "neutral judge", acting to protect the lives, liberty, and property of those who lived within it. Locke argued for inviolate freedom under law in his Second Treatise of Government. Locke argued that government's legitimacy comes from the citizens' delegation to the government of their right of

self-defense (of "self-preservation"). The government thus acts as an impartial, objective agent of that self-defense, rather than each man acting as his own judge, jury, and executioner—the condition in the state of nature. In this view, government derives its "just powers from the consent (a delegation) of the governed,".

The Lockean concept of the social contract was invoked in the United States Declaration of Independence. #25 LA 12 Two Treatises of Government by John Locke

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes Thomas Hobbes (5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679) was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract

theory. Hobbes was a champion of absolutism for the sovereign, but he also developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual; the natural equality of all men; the artificial character of the political order (which led to the later distinction between civil society

and the state); the view that all legitimate political power must be "representative" and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law which leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid. He was one of the founders of modern political philosophy. His understanding of humans as being

matter and motion, obeying the same physical laws as other matter and motion, remains influential; and his account of human nature as self-interested cooperation, and of political communities as being based upon a "social contract" remains one of the major topics of political philosophy. In addition to political philosophy,

Hobbes also contributed to a diverse array of other fields, including history, geometry, the physics of gases, theology, ethics, and general philosophy. Thomas Hobbes famously said that in a "state of nature" human life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". In the absence of political order and law, everyone

would have unlimited natural freedoms, including the "right to all things" and thus the freedom to plunder, rape, and murder; there would be an endless "war of all against all." To avoid this, free men contract with each other to establish political community i.e. civil society through a social contract in which they all gain

security in return for subjecting themselves to an absolute Sovereign, preferably (for Hobbes) a monarch. Though the Sovereign's edicts may well be arbitrary and tyrannical, Hobbes saw absolute government as the only alternative to the terrifying alternative. #25 LA 12 Leviathan The First Part by Thomas Hobbes

Lock v Hobbes

Assignment #1 Read: Two Treatises of Government by John Locke (Chapter 2) & Leviathan The First Part by Thomas Hobbes (Chapter XIV) #25 LA 12 Two Treatises of Government by John Locke #25 LA 12 Leviathan The First Part by Thomas Hobbes

Assignment #2 Conduct a Socratic Seminar on freedom and address the following questions: #25 LA 12 Socratic Seminar on Freedom

English 12 - Mr. Rinka Lesson #25 John Locke V Thomas Hobbes