philibusters
Active Member
Can you match the following four modern (Post medieval) political philosophers: Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rosseau, and Locke. I'll post answer tomorrow.
1. Individuals outside society have no community ties to persons who are not family and friends. Thus might makes right in societies without centralized authority and no individual is completely safe or can count on stability. To avoid this situations, 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.
2. Man was at his most altrustic before government. Government tends to be artificial, it often creates more injustice than justice. The injustices government creates happen because government is by definition artificial, its not based on natural rights, but on arbitrary legal rights creating inequality, envy, and unnatural desires. The best government is the government governed by the general will. The general will is democratic in nature, but is not simply the rule of the majority (where the majority can trod on the rights of the minority. Rather the general will protects certain individual rights in addition to having democratic elements.
3. There are certain political goods, of which three are specially important: national independence, security, and a well-ordered constitution. The best constitution is one which apportions legal rights among prince, nobles, and people in proportion to their real power, for under such a constitution successful revolutions are difficult and therefore stability and prosperity is possible. However, it is futile to pursue a political purpose by methods that are bound to fail. Just because your "ends" are good, does not mean you will succeed unless your "means" are also good. The question of means can be treated in a purely scientific manner without regard to the goodness or badness of the ends.
4. Humans are generally good, but they can also be naturally greedy and violent. In a society without government, and everyone had a natural right to defend his “Life, health, Liberty, or Possessions." Government are formed by the explicit or implicit consent of individuals because governments further prosperity. Without government, the amount of wealth a man can achieve is limited to what he can keep in his immediate possession. A just gov't is formed by the consent of the people to allow greater economic efficiency. In addition to allowing for greater economic efficiency a second role of a just government is to protect individual rights like the right to freedom and to own property.
1. Individuals outside society have no community ties to persons who are not family and friends. Thus might makes right in societies without centralized authority and no individual is completely safe or can count on stability. To avoid this situations, 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.
2. Man was at his most altrustic before government. Government tends to be artificial, it often creates more injustice than justice. The injustices government creates happen because government is by definition artificial, its not based on natural rights, but on arbitrary legal rights creating inequality, envy, and unnatural desires. The best government is the government governed by the general will. The general will is democratic in nature, but is not simply the rule of the majority (where the majority can trod on the rights of the minority. Rather the general will protects certain individual rights in addition to having democratic elements.
3. There are certain political goods, of which three are specially important: national independence, security, and a well-ordered constitution. The best constitution is one which apportions legal rights among prince, nobles, and people in proportion to their real power, for under such a constitution successful revolutions are difficult and therefore stability and prosperity is possible. However, it is futile to pursue a political purpose by methods that are bound to fail. Just because your "ends" are good, does not mean you will succeed unless your "means" are also good. The question of means can be treated in a purely scientific manner without regard to the goodness or badness of the ends.
4. Humans are generally good, but they can also be naturally greedy and violent. In a society without government, and everyone had a natural right to defend his “Life, health, Liberty, or Possessions." Government are formed by the explicit or implicit consent of individuals because governments further prosperity. Without government, the amount of wealth a man can achieve is limited to what he can keep in his immediate possession. A just gov't is formed by the consent of the people to allow greater economic efficiency. In addition to allowing for greater economic efficiency a second role of a just government is to protect individual rights like the right to freedom and to own property.