Hobbes or Locke?

[chickendude]

RE: Re: RE: Hobbes or Locke?

@blahblah
tell us what you think then =)

@talisman
First half of your thing is locke, second half is hobbes
they kind of contradict each other in a way too

first half says, we should all work together to come to a consensus on a good idea and work with that.
second half says, we must kill everybody who disagrees with us because they might kill us first. We must kill anything that gets in our way for our own good.

They are very contrasting views and you kind of have to go one way or the other.

[The_Q]

RE: Re: RE: Hobbes or Locke?

I'm a hardcore Libertarian.

Locke.

Q

[GuidoHunter]

RE: Re: RE: Hobbes or Locke?

Locke, most definitely.

Almost every "primitive" culture develops a form of government to regulate the sharing that is necessary for survival and comfort, not to control it completely. Hobbes's ideas failed by evidence.

Also, chicken, I think you're way oversimplifying the situation in Iraq and cherry-picking examples to nicely fit an example of Hobbesian brutishness.

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com

[chickendude]

RE: Re: RE: Hobbes or Locke?

Is the government actually created by the people though?
The governments are mostly created when one person gets enough power to enforce their will on everyone. Sometimes this will is good, sometimes it isn't.
Many governments aren't formed by the people deciding on one. They are formed by one person having enough of an army loyal to them, that he can force people to follow him.
This is how almost every monarchy began
The first modern democracy (not rome) was in britain when the parliament overthrew
Cromwell(parliament) and king charles fought it out, and it was gruesome. People went back into a primitive state. Hobbes said that someone needed to take control, because either person was better than nobody.

It's not very often that a government is created by a culture working together to form it. (USA is one of the few that did though, and it turned out quite well)

this debate isn't over what you want government to be
its about what government should be

the US government can be viewed from both sides for example
Hobbes:
government is powerful. It has enough power to be able to give people privileges, because it knows it can control its people. People are afraid to break rules because of the cops. It keeps us in line. We get lots of freedom only because the government is strong enough to enforce it.

Locke: Government is only protecting our rights. It is working for us. We follow its rules in exchange for it protecting us. If it fails to do well, then we have the right to overthrow it and create a better one on our own.

[esupin]

RE: Re: RE: Hobbes or Locke?

Well, considering the founding fathers believed that government is created by the people, and can be overthrown by the people if it becomes too oppressive, Hobbes's theory does not really work in this case.

However, times have changed, and I think the US government can be looked at in a more Hobbesian point of view, so who knows.

[GuidoHunter]

Re: RE: Re: RE: Hobbes or Locke?

However, times have changed, and I think the US government can be looked at in a more Hobbesian point of view, so who knows.

Uh, how? Our Bill of Rights is a list of inalienable rights that the government can't touch, not freedoms that the government delegated to us. Our laws serve to protect those rights from others. If the people thought that the government controlled our rights and wasn't protecting them, they would ditch that government.

And chicken, the societies about which I was talking (pretty much all band/village/chiefdom/state societies that I can think of dating from thousands of years ago to the present) selected their leader willingly.

Sure there are some societies who didn't have a contractual agreement between ruler and subjects, and Hobbes was most certainly right in his situation, but it's too much of a stretch to apply that generally where Locke's ideas are much more fitting.

--Guido

http://andy.mikee385.com

[chickendude]

RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Hobbes or Locke?

It's not what the founding fathers said, its what the government IS. This can be interpreted multiple ways.

Also, guido. It's not a stretch to apply Hobbes' ideas there.
Locke's ideas aren't most fitting in many many cases. You can't stretch them either.
Take the middle ages for example. people would fight for whatever government gave them the most food and protection. Mercenaries were used throughout history as people without a counry who fought for whoever paid/fed them. These are people who are just going for survival- not in any society, and they are ruthless. The Romans hired barbarian mercinaries (who turned against them). The British East India company hired Indian mercenaries to do their work. All these people are people without government, who act in a very hobbesian way. Do whatever it takes to help yourself. They didn't have any allegiance to a nation. This goes against Locke's idea that they would get together and form a government, as these people would much rather kill each other to get food and money.

Also, I would just like to add that it isn't something that can be different at different periods. We are talking about the State of Nature. The Nature of Man, how people would act if there was no society.
Would we kill our neighbors to steal their money if we didn't like them(remember no government to stop us), or would we work together to prevent chaos?

Also you could look at the big picture and say that on a large scale we are still like that. The fact that the whole world is split up shows this. Countries constantly try to attack each other because they don't like each other. They don't work together. They try, but they, never really trust each other. There is a reason why our world is split up into so many countries. There may be alliances, but it is not the same as being unified.

this isn't something that changes over time

[MonkeyFoo]

RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Hobbes or Locke?

I prefer not to think about it to hard, but I really have to go with Locke. I like his whole thing of life liberty and the pursuit of property as our basic rights. Hell, we founded our nation on it, didn't we? Plus, I'm sorta anti-totalitarianism, preferring to believe that the people will make the right decision most of the time. We just need a little constitution to keep us from shafting the minorities, and we're set.