Locke and HobbesHumanism to Enlightenment

“In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

Renaissance Political Philosophy• CHIEF CHARACTERISTICS OF HUMANISM:

– A. REVIVAL OF INTEREST IN THE CLASSICAL WORLD• STUDY OF ITS GAMMER• RHETORIC• HISTORY• AND POETRY

– B. EMPHASIS ON EDUCATION

• C. ACTIVE PARTICIPATION IN PRACTICAL AFFAIRS

• Machiavelli – The Prince• Sir Thomas More - Utopia

Political TheoryGreat people assert control over others and why

do others let them• Philosophers developed ideas during the Renaissance and influenced

the Enlightenment– Machiavelli (The Prince)– John Locke (Treatise on Two Governments)

• Tabula Rasa (blank slate)– Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan)

• Philosophers who are considered Enlightenment philosophers• Voltaire

– "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him." criticizing organized religion

– Deism• A mechanic created the universe and to Voltaire it was created like a clock

– Created by God and allowed to run without God’s interference or according to natural law

• Montesquieu (Spirit of Laws where idea of checks and balances is articulated)

• Rousseau (The Social Contract)

Scientific Revolution• Copernicus

– solar system is sun centered• Kepler

– planets move around sun in ellipses• Galileo

– heavenly bodies are composed of material substance like earth• Newton

– three law of motion govern planetary bodies as well as objects on earth• Descartes

– rationalism - reason is the chief source of knowledge– “I think, therefore I am”

• Robert Boyle – Boyle's law - volume of a gas varies with the pressure exerted on it

• Lavoisier – invented a system of naming the chemical elements

• Vesalius– presented a careful and accurate examination of the individual organs and

general structure of the human body• Bacon

– developed the scientific method based on inductive reasoning

Changing Ideas

• Heliocentric universe

• Threw doubt on literal interpretation of the bible

• Role of church changed as they tried to use force to keep people within the church (Inquisitions) and contributed to further reformation more secular role of church

• Stimulated curiosity about the Globe and people began to explore

Inquisitions• The witchcraft craze began as an outgrowth of the

Inquisition’s search for heretics. • During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, an

intense hysteria affected the lives of many Europeans. Perhaps more than a hundred thousand people were charged with witchcraft.

• As more and more people were brought to trial, the fear of witches grew, as did the fear of being accused of witchcraft.

• By 1650, however, the witchcraft hysteria had begun to lessen. As governments grew stronger after the period of crisis, fewer officials were willing to disrupt their societies with trials of witches. In addition, attitudes were changing.

• People found it unreasonable to believe in the old view of a world haunted by evil spirits.

The Enlightenment

• believing that every natural phenomenon had a cause and effect

• a belief that truth is arrived at by reason

• believing that natural law governed the universe

• progress would always take place

Modern Political Theory•      "From this the question arises whether it is better to be loved

more than feared, or feared more than loved. The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved ... for it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, ... anxious to avoid danger, and greedy. ... Men find it easier to attack one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared. ...     A prince ... must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves. ... Therefore, a wise ruler ought not keep his word when by so doing it would be against his interest. ... If men were all good, this [rule] would not be a good one; but as they are bad, and would not be honest with you, so you are not bound to keep your word with them. ..."—Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1513)

Niccolo Machiavelli:Renaissance Political Thinker

• One of the most important books of the Renaissance was a small volume called The Prince written by Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527).

• Machiavelli had been a government worker, close to powerful men, but never a leader himself. In this book he offered advice to princes on how to rule.

• His political philosophy (ideas on government) was startling. • It was different from medieval ideas about the proper duties, obligations and policies

of good rulers.– Where did Machiavelli get such ideas?

• Clearly not from the Bible. • Nor did they come from the ancient Greek ( Athenian) philosophers who stressed the well-being of

the entire community and the rule of law.

• His best sources were the rulers he observed--Franciesco Sforza, Lorenzo do Medici, and above all, Cesare Borgia.

• The biographies of these men reveal them to be powerful, tricky, and often dishonest.• Some historians question whether or not Machiavelli was really as amoral (without

standards of right and wrong) as he sounds. • Perhaps he was actually making fun of men like Borgia and exposing the extremes to

which they would go to keep themselves in power. • Whatever his purpose the adjective “Machiavellian” has come to mean unscrupulous,

amoral, tricky, and manipulative.

Front Cover

Leviathan• Metaphor for the state, the Leviathan is described as an

artificial person whose body is made up of all the bodies of its citizens, who are the literal members of the Leviathan's body. – The head of the Leviathan is the sovereign. – The Leviathan is constructed through contract by people in the state

of nature in order to escape the horrors of this natural condition. – The power of the Leviathan protects them from the abuses of one

another.

• "covenant" or "social contract," contract is the act of giving up certain natural rights and transferring them to someone else, on the condition that everyone else involved in making the contract also simultaneously gives up their rights. – People agreeing to the contract retain only those rights over others

that they are content for everyone else to retain over them.

Allegory

• Leviathan from the Bible: "who could ever stand up to him?" [book of Job 41].

• Government should rule just as fierce as the monster

State of Nature• Hobbes

– The "natural condition of mankind" is what would exist if there were no government, no civilization, no laws, and no common power to restrain human nature. The state of nature is a "war of all against all," in which human beings constantly seek to destroy each other in an incessant pursuit for power. Life in the state of nature is "nasty, brutish and short."

• Locke– people first lived in a state of anarchy– in order to maintain stability they made a social contract

in which they KEPT natural rights

Leviathan“But as men, for the attaining of peace and

conservation of themselves thereby, have made an artificial man, which we call a Commonwealth; so also have they made artificial chains, called civil laws, which they themselves, by mutual covenants, have fastened at one end to the lips of that man, or assembly, to whom they have given the sovereign power, and at the other to their own ears. These bonds, in their own nature but weak, may nevertheless be made to hold, by the danger, though not by the difficulty of breaking them. “

John Locke – Father of Liberalism

• People first lived in a state of anarchy• in order to maintain stability they made a social contract in

which they KEPT natural rights• when a ruler violated these rights the people had the right to

overthrow and replace the ruler with another who pledged to observe and protect their rights

• Reflected in the Bill of Rights• unalienable rights of the people including the rights of life,

liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. All powers of the government belong to the people and that no government can exist without the consent of its citizens. It calls for the right of the people "to alter or to abolish" the government and to set up a new government if the government fails to protect or attempts to destroy the people's rights

• "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary... Declaration of Independence

Declaration of Independence

• 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.

Magna Carta• "No freeman shall be taken and imprisoned or disseised or

exiled or in any way destroyed, nor shall we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land." signed 1215 by King John

• In other words, life, liberty, and property were not to be taken from anyone without judgment of the person's peers and only by process of the law of the land.

• The King Could Not Collect Any New Tax Without the Consent of the Great Council

• Property Would Not Be Taken Without Payment• Justice Would Not Be Sold, Refused, or Delayed• An Accused Person Was Entitled to a Trial by a Jury of Peers• Monarch was not above the law• Appears in US Bill of Rights (5th Amendment)

Declaration of Independence• That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these

ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to 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. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.