Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

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Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

• Leviathan was written during the English Civil
  War much of the book is occupied with
  demonstrating the necessity of a strong central
  authority to avoid the evil of discord and civil
  war. Any abuses of power by this authority are to
  be accepted as the price of peace. In particular,
  the doctrine of separation of powers is rejected
  the sovereign must control civil, military,
  judicial and ecclesiastical powers.
• In Leviathan, Hobbes explicitly states that the
  sovereign has authority to assert power over
  matters of faith and doctrine, and that if he
  does not do so, he invites discord. Hobbes
  presents his own religious theory, but states
  that he would defer to the will of the sovereign
  (when that was re-established).

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Bellum omnium contra omnes
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John Locke

• John Locke (August 29, 1632 October 28, 1704)
  was an influential English philosopher. In
  epistemology, Locke has often been classified as
  a British Empiricist, along with David Hume and
  George Berkeley. He is equally important as a
  social contract theorist, as he developed an
  alternative to the Hobbesian state of nature and
  argued a government could only be legitimate if
  it received the consent of the governed through a
  social contract and protected the natural rights
  of life, liberty, and estate. If such consent was
  not given, argued Locke, citizens had a right of
  rebellion. Locke is one of the few major
  philosophers who became a minister of government.

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Social Contract

• Social contract theory (or contractarianism) is a
  concept used in philosophy, political science,
  and sociology to denote an implicit agreement
  within a state regarding the rights and
  responsibilities of the state and its citizens,
  or more generally a similar concord between a
  group and its members, or between individuals.
  All members within a society are assumed to agree
  to the terms of the social contract by their
  choice to stay within the society without
  violating the contract such a violation would
  signify a problematic attempt to return to the
  state of nature. It has been often noted, indeed,
  that social contract theories relied on a
  specific anthropological conception of man as
  either "good" or "evil". Thomas Hobbes (1651),
  John Locke (1689) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  (1762) are the most famous philosophers of
  contractarianism, which is the theoretical
  groundwork of democracy.

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• Introduction
• In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
• The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united
  States of America,
• 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.
• The Preamble
• We hold these Truths to be self-evident that all
  Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by
  their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights,
  that among these are Life, Liberty, and the
  Pursuit of Happiness.
• That to secure these Rights, Governments are
  instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers
  from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever
  any Form of Government becomes destructive of
  these Ends, it is the Right of the People to
  alter or 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.

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David Hume

• David Hume (April 26, 1711 August 25, 1776) was
  a Scottish philosopher, economist, and historian,
  as well as an important figure of Western
  philosophy and of the Scottish Enlightenment

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Utilitarianism

• It was probably Hume who, along with his fellow
  members of the Scottish Enlightenment, first
  advanced the idea that the explanation of moral
  principles is to be sought in the utility they
  tend to promote. On the contrary, Hume was a
  moral sentimentalist and, as such, thought that
  moral principles could not be intellectually
  justified. Some principles simply appeal to us
  and others don't and the reason why utilitarian
  moral principles do appeal to us is that they
  promote our interests and those of our fellows,
  with whom we sympathize. Humans are hard-wired to
  approve of things that help society public
  utility. Hume used this insight to explain how we
  evaluate a wide array of phenomena, ranging from
  social institutions and government policies to
  character traits and talents

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An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

• By the term impression, then, I mean all our
  more lively perceptions, when we hear, or see, or
  feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will. And
  impressions are distinguished from ideas, which
  are the less lively perceptions, of which we are
  conscious, when we reflect on any of those
  sensations or movements above mentioned.
• It seems a proposition, which will not admit of
  much dispute, that all our ideas are nothing but
  copies of our impressions, or, in other words,
  that it is impossible for us to think of
  anything, which we have not antecedently felt,
  either by our external or internal senses.