The Social Contract Theory:
The social contract theory basically states that people are moral obligations of a contract or an agreement of political form as they are dependent on it for the preservation of basic security rights. So what it means is that morality consists of a basic set of rules governing behaviour that rational people would accept .However many philosophers argue that it paints an incomplete view of our moral and political lives. Our insecurities, selfishness, scarcity of recourses and equality of need forms the basis for this theory.
Since no man has any natural authority over his fellow men, and since force is not the source of right, conventions remain as the basis of all lawful authority among men.
The State of nature:
According to Thomas Hobbes, the primitive state of nature is like a war of all against all where man is insecure, about his fundamental rights. He lives in constant fear of loosing out on his freedom. He is caught in a vicious cirlce of debt, turmoil and an unbalance in life. He doesn't know how to be civil. So people of the 17th
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That is, nature offers us the opportunity to conduct one's life as one sees fit. Though is is without government, yet it does not lack morality. Different species of organisms in nature actually take care of each other and coexist whereas government and the mankind has destroyed this sense of unserstanding.According to Thomas hobbes nature is in a state of constant war, it is brutal and intolerable and mankind cannot escape form it.Therefore he must agree to the social contract which would help him secure his rights. Locke says that nature in itself isnt in a state of war but is slowly evolving into one because of disputes between us for our social rigths, disputes in propert etc. Whenever man tries to access something that is clearly and most definitely not his, there is chances that he is in war with
John Locke’s major philosophies included the Social Contract and the Second Treatises of Government which influenced the Constitution of the United States. John Locke expressed his ideas on human nature and government in his famous Social Contract and The Second Treatise of Government which greatly influenced James Madison to write The Constitution of the United States. According to, (What life would be like in a “State of Nature”,2017), John Locke had no doubt that the State of Nature has a law in which everyone must follow. Those fundamental rights consist of the right to life, liberty, and property. Human Nature results in individuals living without government, which allowed Locke to believe life without government will provoke violence
There is no government, no authority whatsoever. Every being is born equal and share the right to do anything for their survival. His political theory was based off his idea that all humans are naturally evil and selfish. Hobbes said that this equality leads to war. “...a war of every man against every man.”
Book One of The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau focuses on the reasons that people give up their natural liberty in order to achieve protection from threats to themselves and their property. This results in the formation of a legitimate sovereign where all members are equal. Rousseau believes that no human has authority over another individual because force cannot be established. He argues that no individual will give up his or her freedom without receiving something in return. I will focus my analysis on how the social contract states that we must give up our individual rights in order to obtain equality and security.
The State of Nature, although a state wherein there is no civil authority or government to punish people for transgressions against laws, is not a state without morality. To Locke, persons are assumed to be equal to one another in such a state, and therefore equally capable of discovering and being bound by the Law of Nature. The Law of Nature, which is on Locke’s view the basis of all morality, and given to us by God, commands that we not harm others with regards to their life, health, liberty, or possessions. This is because we all belong equally to God, and because we cannot take away that which is rightfully His, we are prohibited from harming one another. So, the State of Nature is a state of liberty where persons are free to pursue their own interests and plans, free from interference, and, because of the Law of Nature and the restrictions that it imposes upon persons, it is relatively peaceful.
Hobbes believes that the state of nature is a state of war and that no morality exists. Being that the “weakest” could kill the “strongest” men are considered equal. Locke believed the state of nature is not good or bad, it is considered chaotic. Rousseau believed that humans in a state of nature are equal and free. In a state of nature, men are “Noble Savages” and civilization is what actually corrupted them.
Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Discourse on Inequality and Social Contract each attempt to explain the rise of and prescribe the proper management of human society. At the foundation of both philosophies is the principle that humans are asocial by nature, a precept each philosopher interprets and approaches in a different way. Hobbes states that nature made humans relatively “equal,” and that “every man is enemy to every man.” Life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” he says, and “every man has right to everything.” Rousseau outlines primitive asocial man having “everything necessary for him to live in the state of nature” from “instinct alone,” and being “neither good nor evil.”
1. Describe Hobbes ' "state of nature. " - State of nature is when the world has no form of government, no civilizations, or laws and the human beings of this lawless world fall into complete anarchy, or a “war of all against all. 2. HE is arguing that we need to be obligated to keep our agreements because it pave the way any legal sanction, it guarantees that others will do their part for fear of being disciplined and such.
Hobbes viewed state of nature as a state of war. According to Hobbes, in a state of nature, there is no right to property because no one affords another that right. He stated that property and possessions would inevitably cause men to become enemies. Hobbes believes that people have equal physical and mental ability to harm, and that people will do so for three reasons - competition, difference, and glory. " so that in the state of nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel, first, competition; secondly, difference; thirdly, glory" (Hobbes 2008, p.85).
Summary Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) theory of social contract, which states that we need moral, legal rules because we want to escape the state of nature which is solitary, poor, brutal, nasty, and short. In this state, a man can kill others, and there are limited resources. This can soon lead to a state of war in which we are constantly disposed to harm others to achieve our goals. So, in this state of war if a person was to possess a beautiful house or property, and had all the comforts, luxuries, and amenities to lead a wonderful life; others could come and harm him and deprive him of his fruit of labor, life, and liberty. Therefore, the state of nature is that of fear, violence, and distrust.
Both social contract philosophers defended different views about moral and political obligations of men living in the state of nature stripped of their social characters. The state of nature illustrates how human beings acted prior to entering into civil society and becoming social beings living under common legitimacy. The state of nature is to be illustrated as a hypothetical device to explain political importance in the society. Thomas Hobbes, propounded politics and morality in his concept of the state
According to Hobbes, a sovereign, whether the sovereign was placed into power by violence or force, is the only way to secure law and order. For him, if a citizen obeys the sovereign for fear of punishment or in the fear of the state of nature, it is the choice of the citizen. According to Hobbes, this is not tyranny; it is his idea of a society that is successful, one that does not have room for democracy. As a realist, Hobbes has a fierce distrust of democracy and viewed all of mankind in a restless desire for power. If the people are given power, law and order would crumble in Hobbes’ eyes.
Hobbes' conception of natural rights extended from his conception of man in a "state of nature". He argued that the essential natural (human) right was "to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own Nature, that is to say, of his own Life, and consequently, of doing anything, which in his own judgement, and Reason, he shall conceive to be the unto." Hobbes sharply distinguished this natural "liberty", from natural "laws", described generally as "a precept, or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of his life, or take away the means of preserving his life, and to omit, that, by which he think it may best be
Thomas Hobbes has been famous for his philosophies on political and social order. In many of his scholastic works, he maintains the position that in the presence of a higher authority the duty of the rest of mankind is to simply obey. The discourse on this essay will focus on his views expressed in his book The Leviathan. In this book Hobbes’ views are fundamentally entrenched in his description that in a society with no higher authority life would be nasty, short and brutish (?) .This essay will engage in discussion by first laying out the conceptual arguments of anarchy and the human state of nature.
However, because individuals are imperfect creatures, so then the state of nature is also imperfect. Locke recognizes that a state of war is cultivated in the state of nature when a person violates the laws of nature: the inalienable rights of another. Individuals have the rights to enforce the laws of nature against those who violate and aid those whose rights have been violated (Locke 1982: 2, 8). But only then is there violence in the state of nature, the viciousness of humanity other theorists envisioned is lost in the theories of Locke and Rousseau. In fact, Rousseau explicitly criticizes the other theorists for not going far enough in their explanations.
Thomas Hobbes a 17th century philosopher who is best known for his political philosophy. The idea that nature is competitive, where morality only appears when we enter into society and it is backed up by the power of the sovereign. Hobbes define human nature as sensational because sensation is the source of all of our thoughts. We seek out pleasant experience and we avoid unpleasant experiences. For example death is an unpleasant experience where people are fearful losing their lives.