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Example research essay topic: State Of Nature Second Treatise Of Government - 2,352 words

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Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan) and John Locke (Second Treatise of Government) Thomas Hobbes and John Locke are typically linked with the foundations of political economy, while at the same time Locke's teaching is regarded as differing substantively from that of Hobbes. Locke can be shown to have advanced the cause of political economy almost exactly as it had been advocated by Hobbes, but being a more prudent man, he did so in a way that was far more acceptable than had been possible for his less cautious predecessor. Hobbes had sought to establish an entirely new psychology of man, compatible with the new mathematically based sciences, but his teaching was too openly blasphemous to find acceptance. It is the judicious Locke, who, in distancing himself from Hobbes, and seemingly aligning himself with the accepted teachings of the church, decisively undermines those very teachings, and thereby advances the cause of political economy, the moral foundations of which could not be supported by the previous tradition of Western thought. The paper is going to demonstrate the peculiarities of philosophers systems regarding political regimes, state power and individual freedom through analysis and comparison of Locke's Second Treatise of Government and Hobbes Leviathan.

Thomas Hobbes is traditionally identified as the discoverer of political economy, which is the forerunner of contemporary economic positivism. This is because Hobbes was the first to recognize the need for man to be understood on the basis of a psychology consistent with his ability to invent science. Hobbes' teaching involved a rejection of biblical teaching, and he made this rejection too explicit for his work to find immediate acceptance. It is the more subtle approach of John Locke which facilitated support for the new science. Locke appealed to man's greed on the grounds of natural right and made the pursuit of earthly riches an acceptable substitute for the less certain heavenly rewards of a virtuous life. T.

Hobbes could not free himself of certain notions of inequality which were the source of quarrel among men and so deferred to the diffident, whose posture could be meliorated by confidence in an enlightened, benevolent, absolute monarch. These related qualities could be developed by way of Hobbes' own teaching, which attempted in the sphere of political and social life what the new physics and its method of proceeding or analysis was already achieving in the material world. What was still a novelty in the European world of the seventeenth century (i. e. applying this method to human behavior) is a universal commonplace in the early twenty-first century. But as is usual with such phenomena, the full significance of the consequence of this adherence to method is not apparent to those who employ it as a matter of course.

While Hobbes may be said to be the inventor of modern social science, its contemporary manifestation as nihilistic existentialism has its origins in Nietzsche. The death of God also marks the demise of philosophy, properly understood. In the seventeenth century, however, Hobbes' teaching was still so radical that it needed mitigation in order better to secure the revolution in political philosophy rendered necessary by the new physics and its method. John Locke guaranteed Machiavelli's success, by revealing the manner in which existing political arrangements, such as those of Great Britain, could be accommodated to a new economic order so as to ensure the peaceful pursuit to the means of happiness by way of trade and commerce.

While Locke wrote explicitly on economic topics it is his most important political statement, Two Treatises of Government, which is of the greatest significance for economic science. It is in this work that Locke presents his theoretical defense of capitalism and makes decisive the break with the previous tradition. Claiming to be guided by the scholastic tradition Locke uses the words "idea" and "fancy" in reference to idealized political regimes. Neither is a biblical word, but both are found in Hobbes' theory of the imagination, which attributes "image of the things seen" to the effects of bodies in motion: For after the object is removed, or the eye shut we still retain an image of the thing seen, though more obscure, than when we see it. And this is it, the Latins call imagination, from the image made in seeing; and apply the same, though improperly, to all the other senses. But the Greeks call it fancy; which signifies appearance, and is proper to one sense, as to another.

Imagination therefore is nothing but decaying sense; and is found in men, and many other living creatures, as well sleeping as waking (Hobbes, 1962, p. 23). Locke would seem to imply, therefore, that the traditional search for the best political regime is fanciful, in the sense Hobbes meant for the word, when demonstrating via his doctrine of imagination, that knowledge through the senses is not a true way of knowing. It is Hobbes, whom Locke really opposes, when he argues against absolute monarchy and the rules of succession associated with this regime. But if we allow Locke to speak for himself, his underlying agreement with Hobbes and the method of modern physics, is made abundantly clear: For the desire, strong desire of preserving his life and being having been planted in him, as a principle of action by God himself, reason, which was the voice of God in him, could not but teach him and assure him, that pursuing that natural inclination he had to preserve his being, he followed the will of his maker, and therefore had a right to make use of those creatures, which by his reason or senses he could discover would be serviceable thereunto (Locke, 1963, pp. 242 - 3).

In the first chapter of the Second Treatise, Locke succinctly clarifies his disagreement with Hobbes. While not denying the need Hobbes had perceived for strong government, he denies the right of the strongest. We may discern Locke's preferred form of government when he distinguishes the power of a magistrate (one who holds political office) over a subject as that of a master over his servant, i. e. a contractual relation which differs radically from a lord over his slave, and is more akin to the natural relations of a husband over his wife. The latter is sanctioned by law but conditional, as is the power of a father over his children.

In distinguishing the preferred political arrangement by reference to nature, Locke indicates that he follows Hobbes and the new physics generally in taking his bearings from the origins. But Locke takes his bearings from the state of nature not as the pre-social state hypothesized by Hobbes where the life of man was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" (Hobbes, 1962, p. 100), but rather, the "state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions, and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man" (Locke, 1963, p. 309). From this perfectly free state, and all being bound by that law, it follows that all are equally bound to obey it. And in enlisting "the judicious Hooker" in support of such equality, it is made to be "the foundation of that obligation to mutual love among men" on which Hooker builds their reciprocal duties and "from whence he derives the great maxims of justice and charity" (Locke, 1963, p. 310).

Charity is the Christian virtue; the Aristotelian counterpart is friendship (philia). "To choose to live together is friendship. The end of the state is the good life... And the state is the union of families and villages in a perfect and self-sacrificing life, by which we mean a happy and honorable life" (Aristotle, 1985, p. 2032). For the Socratics, friendship was essential for happiness. "Happiness" does not appear in Locke's Treatises. For Hobbes, the voluntary motion, felicity, was the counterpart of the new physics' inertia (MacPherson, 1951, p. 559). Locke's substitute for happiness, it becomes clear, is the peaceful pursuit of property (MacPherson, 1951, p. 559).

Locke purports to find the state of nature to be one of equality, all creatures of the same species being "promiscuously born to all the same advantages of Nature, and the use of the same faculties" (Locke, 1963, p. 309). But from being originally born to the use of the same faculties, men come to be furnished only with "like faculties. " The difference comes about because God, although giving the world to men in common, requires them also to cultivate it, in other words, to labor. Specifically, God intended the world for the "industrious and rational", who, in applying the same faculties more intensely than their opposite, the "quarrelsome and contentious", come to have a greater right to what was originally given in common (Locke, 1963, p. 333). According to Locke, freedom as such, however, cannot provide the necessary means to self-preservation (Strauss, 1953, p. 51); and consequently Locke claims that if "we consider natural reason, " we are told, "that men, being once born, have a right to their preservation, and consequently to meat and drink, and such other things, as nature affords for their subsistence" (Locke, 1963, p. 327). The state of nature as described by Locke is not Hobbes' pre-social state (Strauss, 1953, p. 78), because the continual fear and danger of violent death envisaged by Hobbes exists in or out of society wherever "a sedate settled design, upon another man's life" is present; that is, wherever men are not under the "ties of the common law of reason." Locke (1963, p. 319) finds it: ... reasonable and just...

to have a right to destroy that which threatens [him] with destruction. For by the fundamental law of Nature, man being to be preserved, as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: And one may destroy a man who makes war upon him... for the same reason, that he may kill a wolf or a lion. Moreover, men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature...

Want of a common judge with authority, puts all men in a state of nature: force without right, upon a man's person, makes a state of war, both where there is, and is not, a common judge (Locke, 1963, p. 321). While the state of nature is the state all men naturally are in, Locke (1963, p. 319) easily grants "that civil government is the proper remedy for the inconveniences" of that state, "which must certainly be great, where men may be judges in their own case." While being the judge in his own case is traditionally the practice of absolute monarchy where no redress for injury done is conceivable, civil government is the proper remedy to the state of nature as a state of war. Accordingly Locke (1963, p. 317) finds that the only compact which puts an end to the sate of nature is that "one of agreeing together mutually to enter into one community, and make one body politic." And, moreover, he affirms that all men remain in the state of nature (in or out of society), until "by their own consents they make themselves members of some political society" (Locke, 1963, p. 318). Government by consent, Locke makes clear in the sequel of the Second Treatise, is the political regime which came to be known as representative government, either in the form of constitutional monarchy as in Great Britain, or democratic republican government in the USA. This is the regime most consistent with the state of nature, as it retains the right for all men to be judge in their own case respecting the means to their own preservation. That is, it leaves each man free to accumulate, by means of peaceful exchange, as much title to property as he is able.

This brings us to the pivotal chapter in the Second Treatise, chapter five, in which Locke establishes man's title to property. For government to be legitimate it must incorporate the law of nature. Freedom, being both the fence and foundation to each individual's preservation, and nourishment, or more generally, property, the means, title to property as sanctioned by natural law, are distributed unequally due to the exertions of different degrees of industry. Legitimate government must necessarily be representative of the different degrees of rationality and industry which arise due to all men being obliged to consult reason and so either labor or starve.

Locke's idea was that rather than virtue being the natural end of government, the condition for happiness was (Locke, 1963, p. 401) more a matter of its pursuit than its accomplishment: The great end of men entering into society, being the enjoyment of their properties in peace and safety, and the great instrument and means of that being the laws established in that society; the first and fundamental positive law of all commonwealths, is the establishing of the legislative power; as the first and fundamental natural law, which is to govern even the legislative it self, is the preservation of the society, and (as far as will consist with the public good) of every person in it. Therefore, the core idea of Locke, surely being influenced by Hobbes Leviathan is that Absolute Monarchy, which by some Men is counted the only Government in the World [referring to Hobbes], is indeed inconsistent with Civil Society... (Locke, 1963, p 326). Bibliography Aristotle, Politics, in Barnes, J. (Ed. ), The Complete Works of Aristotle, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1985 Locke, J. Two Treatises of Government, Las lett, P. (Ed. ), Mentor, New York, NY, 1963 Hobbes, T. The Leviathan: or the Matter Form and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil, Oakeshott, M. (Ed. ), Collier Macmillan, New York, NY, 1962 MacPherson, C. B. "Locke on capitalist appropriation", Western Political Quarterly, Vol.

IV, pp. 550 - 66, 1951 Strauss, L. Natural Right and History, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1953


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