Wednesday, January 10, 2018

1.) Read the following background information about Thomas Hobbes & John Locke:

Two English intellectuals, mathematician Thomas Hobbes (15881679) and philosopher John Locke (16321704), were among the first to use a scientific approach to study man and his society. As a mathematician, Hobbes political theory was an effort to make politics into an exact science like geometry. Hobbes was an admirer of Galileo’s studies of motion, and attempted to apply Galileos scientific principles to social theory. The philosopher John Locke was himself a friend of Sir Isaac Newton, and was influenced by Newton’s description of the universe as a vast machine operating by precise, unvarying scientific laws. Locke thought deeply about the nature of economics, psychology and religion, as well as politics.

Both men lived through upheavals of seventeenth-century English politics, and witnessed the establishment of limited monarchy and Parliamentary rule. Hobbes had witnessed the bloody execution of King Charles I in 1649, as the culmination of England’s bitter Civil War (16421649). As tutor to the young heir-apparent Charles II, he fled with the royal household to France after the King’s execution. Locke, on the other hand, although aligned with the political opposition to the Stuarts and exiled in 1683, was successful in government circles upon his return to England after 1688. He witnessed the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1689, in which William and Mary came to the throne of England, replacing the monarch James II almost without bloodshed.

Hobbes’ and Locke’s divergent views of human nature reflect their different personal experiences. While Hobbes concluded that the nature of humans was competitive, that fear was their most powerful motive for action, and that their natural state was one of war, Locke saw men living in a state of nature which was basically reasonable and cooperative. Hobbes’ pessimistic view of human nature did not appeal to most Enlightenment thinkers: Locke’s view of humankind as essentially reasonable and benevolent accorded much better with the optimism of the age, and seemed to justify it. But the two English political theorists had pointed the way to a new, rationalist approach to the problems of government and society. They showed that the laws of science might have their counterpart in other laws that governed social and political behavior. The scientific method could be applied even to intractable questions of politics.

2.) Read the excerpts from Hobbes' Leviathan & Locke's Of Civil Government

3.) After reading the excerpts, write a ONE (1) page reaction paper on who's point of view you support (Hobbes or Locke)

• Make sure to state specific examples from the reading to support your opinion
• Can be in First Person