Locke and Hobbes

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Locke and Hobbes

• Humanism to Enlightenment
• In every stage of these Oppressions We have
  Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms
  Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by
  repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is
  thus marked by every act which may define a
  Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free
  people.

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Renaissance Political Philosophy

• CHIEF CHARACTERISTICS OF HUMANISM
• A. REVIVAL OF INTEREST IN THE CLASSICAL WORLD
• STUDY OF ITS GAMMER
• RHETORIC
• HISTORY
• AND POETRY
• B. EMPHASIS ON EDUCATION
• C. ACTIVE PARTICIPATION IN PRACTICAL AFFAIRS
• Machiavelli The Prince
• Sir Thomas More - Utopia

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Political TheoryGreat people assert control over
others and why do others let them

• Philosophers developed ideas during the
  Renaissance and influenced the Enlightenment
• Machiavelli (The Prince)
• John Locke (Treatise on Two Governments)
• Tabula Rasa (blank slate)
• Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan)
• Philosophers who are considered Enlightenment
  philosophers
• Voltaire
• "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to
  invent Him." criticizing organized religion
• Deism
• A mechanic created the universe and to Voltaire
  it was created like a clock
• Created by God and allowed to run without Gods
  interference or according to natural law
• Montesquieu (Spirit of Laws where idea of checks
  and balances is articulated)
• Rousseau (The Social Contract)

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Scientific Revolution

• Copernicus
• solar system is sun centered
• Kepler
• planets move around sun in ellipses
• Galileo
• heavenly bodies are composed of material
  substance like earth
• Newton
• three law of motion govern planetary bodies as
  well as objects on earth
• Descartes
• rationalism - reason is the chief source of
  knowledge
• I think, therefore I am
• Robert Boyle
• Boyle's law - volume of a gas varies with the
  pressure exerted on it
• Lavoisier
• invented a system of naming the chemical elements
• Vesalius
• presented a careful and accurate examination of
  the individual organs and general structure of
  the human body
• Bacon
• developed the scientific method based on
  inductive reasoning

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Changing Ideas

• Heliocentric universe
• Threw doubt on literal interpretation of the
  bible
• Role of church changed as they tried to use force
  to keep people within the church (Inquisitions)
  and contributed to further reformation more
  secular role of church
• Stimulated curiosity about the Globe and people
  began to explore

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Inquisitions

• The witchcraft craze began as an outgrowth of the
  Inquisitions search for heretics.
• During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
  an intense hysteria affected the lives of many
  Europeans. Perhaps more than a hundred thousand
  people were charged with witchcraft.
• As more and more people were brought to trial,
  the fear of witches grew, as did the fear of
  being accused of witchcraft.
• By 1650, however, the witchcraft hysteria had
  begun to lessen. As governments grew stronger
  after the period of crisis, fewer officials were
  willing to disrupt their societies with trials of
  witches. In addition, attitudes were changing.
• People found it unreasonable to believe in the
  old view of a world haunted by evil spirits.

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The Enlightenment

• believing that every natural phenomenon had a
  cause and effect
• a belief that truth is arrived at by reason
• believing that natural law governed the universe
• progress would always take place

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Modern Political Theory

•      "From this the question arises whether it is
  better to be loved more than feared, or feared
  more than loved. The reply is, that one ought to
  be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult
  for the two to go together, it is much safer to
  be feared than loved ... for it may be said of
  men in general that they are ungrateful, ...
  anxious to avoid danger, and greedy. ... Men find
  it easier to attack one who makes himself loved
  than one who makes himself feared. ...     A
  prince ... must imitate the fox and the lion, for
  the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and
  the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One
  must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a
  lion to frighten wolves. ... Therefore, a wise
  ruler ought not keep his word when by so doing it
  would be against his interest. ... If men were
  all good, this rule would not be a good one
  but as they are bad, and would not be honest with
  you, so you are not bound to keep your word with
  them. ..."Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
  (1513)

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Niccolo MachiavelliRenaissance Political Thinker

• One of the most important books of the
  Renaissance was a small volume called The Prince
  written by Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527).
• Machiavelli had been a government worker, close
  to powerful men, but never a leader himself. In
  this book he offered advice to princes on how to
  rule.
• His political philosophy (ideas on government)
  was startling.
• It was different from medieval ideas about the
  proper duties, obligations and policies of good
  rulers.
• Where did Machiavelli get such ideas?
• Clearly not from the Bible.
• Nor did they come from the ancient Greek (
  Athenian) philosophers who stressed the
  well-being of the entire community and the rule
  of law.
• His best sources were the rulers he
  observed--Franciesco Sforza, Lorenzo do Medici,
  and above all, Cesare Borgia.
• The biographies of these men reveal them to be
  powerful, tricky, and often dishonest.
• Some historians question whether or not
  Machiavelli was really as amoral (without
  standards of right and wrong) as he sounds.
• Perhaps he was actually making fun of men like
  Borgia and exposing the extremes to which they
  would go to keep themselves in power.
• Whatever his purpose the adjective
  Machiavellian has come to mean unscrupulous,
  amoral, tricky, and manipulative.

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Front Cover
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Leviathan

• Metaphor for the state, the Leviathan is
  described as an artificial person whose body is
  made up of all the bodies of its citizens, who
  are the literal members of the Leviathan's body.
• The head of the Leviathan is the sovereign.
• The Leviathan is constructed through contract by
  people in the state of nature in order to escape
  the horrors of this natural condition.
• The power of the Leviathan protects them from the
  abuses of one another.
• "covenant" or "social contract," contract is the
  act of giving up certain natural rights and
  transferring them to someone else, on the
  condition that everyone else involved in making
  the contract also simultaneously gives up their
  rights.
• People agreeing to the contract retain only those
  rights over others that they are content for
  everyone else to retain over them.

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Allegory

• Leviathan from the Bible "who could ever stand
  up to him?" book of Job 41.
• Government should rule just as fierce as the
  monster

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State of Nature

• Hobbes
• The "natural condition of mankind" is what would
  exist if there were no government, no
  civilization, no laws, and no common power to
  restrain human nature. The state of nature is a
  "war of all against all," in which human beings
  constantly seek to destroy each other in an
  incessant pursuit for power. Life in the state of
  nature is "nasty, brutish and short."
• Locke
• people first lived in a state of anarchy
• in order to maintain stability they made a social
  contract in which they KEPT natural rights

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Leviathan

• But as men, for the attaining of peace and
  conservation of themselves thereby, have made an
  artificial man, which we call a Commonwealth so
  also have they made artificial chains, called
  civil laws, which they themselves, by mutual
  covenants, have fastened at one end to the lips
  of that man, or assembly, to whom they have given
  the sovereign power, and at the other to their
  own ears. These bonds, in their own nature but
  weak, may nevertheless be made to hold, by the
  danger, though not by the difficulty of breaking
  them.

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John Locke Father of Liberalism

• People first lived in a state of anarchy
• in order to maintain stability they made a social
  contract in which they KEPT natural rights
• when a ruler violated these rights the people had
  the right to overthrow and replace the ruler with
  another who pledged to observe and protect their
  rights
• Reflected in the Bill of Rights
• unalienable rights of the people including the
  rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of
  happiness. All powers of the government belong
  to the people and that no government can exist
  without the consent of its citizens. It calls
  for the right of the people "to alter or to
  abolish" the government and to set up a new
  government if the government fails to protect or
  attempts to destroy the people's rights
• "When in the course of human events it becomes
  necessary... Declaration of Independence

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Declaration of Independence

• When in the Course of human events it becomes
  necessary for one people to dissolve the
  political bands which have connected them with
  another and to assume among the powers of the
  earth, the separate and equal station to which
  the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle
  them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind
  requires that they should declare the causes
  which impel them to the separation.

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Magna Carta

• "No freeman shall be taken and imprisoned or
  disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor
  shall we go upon him nor send upon him, except by
  the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law
  of the land." signed 1215 by King John
• In other words, life, liberty, and property were
  not to be taken from anyone without judgment of
  the person's peers and only by process of the law
  of the land.
• The King Could Not Collect Any New Tax Without
  the Consent of the Great Council
• Property Would Not Be Taken Without Payment
• Justice Would Not Be Sold, Refused, or Delayed
• An Accused Person Was Entitled to a Trial by a
  Jury of Peers
• Monarch was not above the law
• Appears in US Bill of Rights (5th Amendment)

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Declaration of Independence

• That whenever any Form of Government becomes
  destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the
  People to alter or to abolish it, and to
  institute new Government, laying its foundation
  on such principles and organizing its powers in
  such form, as to them shall seem most likely to
  effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence,
  indeed, will dictate that Governments long
  established should not be changed for light and
  transient causes and accordingly all experience
  hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to
  suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right
  themselves by abolishing the forms to which they
  are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses
  and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same
  Object evinces a design to reduce them under
  absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is
  their duty, to throw off such Government, and to
  provide new Guards for their future security.
  Such has been the patient sufferance of these
  Colonies and such is now the necessity which
  constrains them to alter their former Systems of
  Government. The history of the present King of
  Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries
  and usurpations, all having in direct object the
  establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these
  States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to
  a candid world.