Introduction to Philosophy

Achieve Test Prep: Philosophy

and enlightened perspective, but Hobbes sees this differently. He believes that because we all want the same things, and we all have roughly equal abilities and pose equal threats to one another, the result is a free for all, a war of all against all. Hobbes believed even when we are not actually engaged in a conflict we are worried about being engaged in conflict. This preoccupation with our personal safety precludes the possibility of social cooperation and all of the constructive creations that grow out of such cooperation. It is every person for him-or-herself and this results in a very primitive style of living. Hobbes believed and acknowledged that we may never have actually existed in such a state of nature, but this doesn’t matter. We see the reality of people’s competitive and destructive natures in the way we behave in current society. These competitive and destructive impulses are simply a part of human nature, wired into our brains since birth. It is only when humans come together to make peace with one another, create laws, and establish a central authority to enforce the laws that the moral concepts of justice and injustice come into existence. Weary from this ongoing conflict, threat, and competition the rational part of nature enables us to understand that we need to create a political structure that will enable us to live cooperatively and harmoniously with one another and so we enter into a social contract with others, agreeing to laws and a central governing authority in order to ensure peaceful coexistence. For Hobbes, the social community is essentially a collection of hostile and untrustworthy individuals reluctantly drawn together to promote their individual interests. Hobbes believed that humans are fundamentally predisposed to selfishness and destruction, living originally in a violent state of nature unrestrained by laws or moral disciple. To improve their loves, humans agree to enter into social contracts by which they surrender some of their personal autonomy to a governing authority in exchange for order and protection. Locke: The Social Contract Protects Natural Rights Locke believed that humans are governed by certain natural laws that made them free, rational, and social creatures. As God’s creations, all people are entitled to nontransferable rights, including the rights to life, liberty, health, and property, and no other person has the authority to threaten or remove any of these God-given rights. Nevertheless, despite the advantages of living in the state of nature as free and independent individuals, humans find it advantageous to come together and form a political state to ensure that their natural rights will be protected by laws and the authority of the government. Locke believed that the state is the servant of the people and if the state fails to live up to the terms of the agreement, it can be dismissed through revolution. Locke’s fundamental concepts of inalienable rights formed the basis of America’s Declaration of Independence as well as its Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Locke’s influential work titled The Second Treatise of Civil Government discusses the state of nature and it has a rational structure to it, ordained by God the Creator and manifested in the law of nature which obliges everyone: and reason, which is the law, teaches mankind who will but consult it, that being all

Page 111 of 125

©2017

www.achievetestprep.com