#Summarize the political philosophy of john locke.

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Summarize the political philosophy of john locke.

Summarize the political philosophy of john locke. free#

In any conflict between divine and royal law, Hobbes wrote, the individual should obey the king or choose death.īut the days of absolute kings were numbered. Thus, he advised that the church become a department of the king’s government, which would closely control all religious affairs. He feared religion could become a source of civil war. Hobbes warned against the church meddling with the king’s government. Once the people had given absolute power to the king, they had no right to revolt against him. Hobbes also maintained that the social contract was an agreement only among the people and not between them and their king. Placing all power in the hands of a king would mean more resolute and consistent exercise of political authority, Hobbes argued. Hobbes believed that a government headed by a king was the best form that the sovereign could take. Hobbes called this agreement the “social contract.” The sovereign would make and enforce the laws to secure a peaceful society, making life, liberty, and property possible. The sovereign, created by the people, might be a person or a group. Hobbes asserted that the people agreed among themselves to “lay down” their natural rights of equality and freedom and give absolute power to a sovereign. Hobbes borrowed a concept from English contract law: an implied agreement. The only way out of this situation, Hobbes said, was for individuals to create some supreme power to impose peace on everyone. In the state of nature, there were no laws or anyone to enforce them. As a result, everyone suffered from “continued fear and danger of violent death and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Summarize the political philosophy of john locke. free#

Every person was free to do what he or she needed to do to survive. Hobbes began Leviathan by describing the “state of nature” where all individuals were naturally equal. Hobbes likened the leviathan to government, a powerful state created to impose order. The title of the book referred to a leviathan, a mythological, whale-like sea monster that devoured whole ships. Shortly after Charles was executed, an English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), wrote Leviathan, a defense of the absolute power of kings. The war ended with the beheading of the king. In 1649, a civil war broke out over who would rule England-Parliament or King Charles I. As the absolute rule of kings weakened, Enlightenment philosophers argued for different forms of democracy. Starting in the 1600s, European philosophers began debating the question of who should govern a nation. Bill of Rights in Action Spring 2004 (20:2) Developments in DemocracyīRIA 20:2 Home | How Women Won the Right to Vote | Have Women Achieved Equality? | Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau on Government Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau on Government

[gravitascivics]

SOME ENLIGHTENED BELIEFS

In this story of how federalism, a perception regarding the relationship between the individual and his/her government, has fared during the American experience, this blog has reached the foundation of a new colony, that of Connecticut.  The original motivation to establish that eventual colony and state was spearheaded by Puritans in three towns to separate themselves from the Anglican influence one found in Massachusetts.  That development is described in the last posting.

         It is of importance to this story since in one of the towns seeking separation was Hartford that would become the home of Yale.  There, Samuel Johnson would be influenced by the writings of Enlightenment thinkers and as a post-graduate student and tutor, led the way to institute a new curriculum called “The New Learning.”  

In the reading list of that curriculum were the works of Francis Bacon, John Locke, Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Copernicus, and that was only on the philosophic/science side of scholarly works.  On the literary side there were the stories of Shakespeare, Milton, and Addison.  These works and their ideas hit the “grapevine” of that time, i.e., the religious networks that, in this case, were centered in Yale College.  All this began roughly in the year 1718.

A historian who has studied this development and has reported certain central elements of it is James MacGregor Burns.[1] According to his reportage, the Enlightenment in Europe coincided with the Reformation and, as a result, the church came under critical review when it exercised its authority over questions regarding nature and government.  

Starting with Copernicus and his theorizing that the earth, contrary to religious dictum, was not the center of the universe, led to enormous energetic interest in the study of physical existence.  This encouraged a whole new approach to investigating nature that began with the Cartesian premise that nothing was known (except one’s own existence), and one needed to go out and hypothesize, observe, measure, and tentatively conclude what the basic elements of that reality are.[2]

The second element Burns points out is how extensively this newer view took hold. It stretched throughout Europe and even led to the overthrow of governments.  And once taking hold in America, it played a role in encouraging and emboldening a generation of leaders that would lead toward the independence of the colonies that would become the US.  

Third, he makes a definite connection between Enlightenment ideas and the direction American leaders would take.  These leaders will include John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. Of particular concern were the philosophizing of certain social / economic / political qualities such as liberty and equality.  Here one can trace the original importation of the natural rights view as a legitimate philosophic tradition that owes a lot of its original arguments to John Locke, although, through the ensuing years that tradition has gone through extensive change, especially of late.

And fourth, Burns summarily sees the overwhelming effect of the Enlightenment as a “light” that made visible the realities of existence through the use of reason.  That light shone the way to go past the obstacles of traditional, faith-based thought that had stymied people’s ability to discover what humans have to contend with through the various turns in their lives.  This ranged from diseases, to movement, to meeting the wants and needs of people to survive and live better, more comfortable lives.

The aim of the Enlightenment here in America, as in Europe, was to apply reasoning to science, politics, and religion.  That reason, for example, encouraged religious tolerance; why engage in constant religious fights that in Europe led to the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) that ended due to exhaustion with no side winning?  It upgraded the arts as important pursuits. It promoted a secular or, at least, a non-denominational moral approach that could replace theology.  And, probably most effective, was the introduction of science as a higher education discipline.

One form or result of a secular moral view was the upstart of deism – the belief in an uninvolved deity that might have created what is, but basically stands back and lets that creation do its thing.  Apparently, this belief became common among the leadership class of the American colonies.  

What became disfavored among the elite class were such beliefs in the ability to prophesize and the occurrence of miracles.  But of most importance was the influence the Enlightenment had on the leadership and on many of the common folk as to the reasonableness and prudence in adopting religious tolerance.  This and the other Enlightened views, through the slow process outlined above, took hold especially among the educated.  

It did not directly lead toward demanding independence but laid the foundation that would later make Americans less tolerant of English policies they found distasteful and that was not limited to the upper class.  It grew among the population in general.  So, as for the relevant history of the 1700s, one can see related influences taking hold, but did they eliminate federalist foundational beliefs?  This writer believes they did not, but instead were incorporated under the federated framework the Puritans had established.

Again, that influence can be best summarized as one of congregationalism. This foundational form is counter to the vertical structure of such religions as Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism. The formation of congregations is the result of local people bonding together to establish a church and it was through that mode that Puritanical churches were established in New England. In turn, historians basically agree that this mode naturally led to the establishment of the colonial polities. They also led to the early educational institutions such as Harvard and Yale.

Next, this story will review how Harvard reenters the story of the Enlightenment through mostly the work of Increase Mather.  His work will be the topic of the next posting as that posting aims to fill in some the information gaps regarding the development of the Enlightenment among Americans during the 1700s.

[1] James MacGregor Burns, Fire and Light:  How the Enlightenment Transformed Our World (New York, NY:  MacMillan, 2013).

[2] As the philosophy of science would later state (under the philosophizing of Karl Popper), all conclusions are subject to disproof.  This is known as the principle of falsification. 

[hannah-martin-uor]

Quaderno appunti Inglese

Brave New World

Chapter Eleven

Bernard becomes a celebrity and John a curiosity; Linda is content to take an extended Soma-holiday. Bernard takes the "Savage" to see many aspects of the Brave New World. At this point Lenina is attracted to John, but he ignores her.

Comment‐>A change takes place in Bernard in his new role as celebrity - he enjoys the attention he now receives. John is unimpressed by what he sees and still maintains his "old-fashioned" ideas and values; although attracted to Lenina, he considers such impulses immoral and represses them.

These tours which Bernard and John take provide descriptions of other aspects of life in the World State - specifically, the factory system and the educational system. Remembering that science has developed a method of producing up to ninety - six identical twins from a single egg, we see these identical automatons performing identical tasks. The upper-caste students (Alphas and Betas, each produced from a single egg) are not really educated - they are indoctrinated. In both situations individuality is nonexistent - each is but a member of a particular group.

Chapter Twelve

Bernard invites many important personages to meet John, but John then refuses to attend. Having thus lost the friendship of these people, he turns again to John and Helmholtz.

Comment->Bernard realizes that his popularity is based on the curiosity others have about the Savage. He realizes that John and Helmholtz are his only "real" friends. At this point we find John reading Shakespeare to them - making them aware of new ideas, new beliefs, and new values which they find difficult if not impossible to accept.

This chapter emphasizes the difference in character of Bernard and Helmholtz, and their differences in point of view and attitude. Bernard's dissatisfaction with the life he is leading seems to stem from his not being accepted (alcohol in his blood - surrogate), while Helmholtz's dissatisfaction seems to stem from his belief that life must have some meaning beyond the purely physical.

Chapter Thirteen

Lenina and John have "fallen in love", but she finds his desire to marry repulsive; she makes advances to him, and he locks himself in another room. The telephone rings, and John rushes from the apartment.

Comment->We see again the conflict between the two value systems - between the life on the Reservation and the life in the World State. Lenina and John are attracted to each other, but Lenina expects to have sexual relations with "no strings attached"; John considers sexual relations outside of marriage immoral and disgusting.

Chapter Fourteen

John arrives at the Park Lane Hospital for the Dying, where Linda has been sent. He sits by her bed, remembering his early life at her side, and weeps at her death.

Comment-> The nurses at the hospital are mystified by John's reaction to Linda's dying; they cannot understand his being upset. Since close personal ties are forbidden and all were conditioned to accept death impersonally, they consider John's reaction indecent and disgraceful. 

Chapter Fifteen

Saddened and enraged by Linda's death, John realizes that the government of the World State has made the people the way they are, and that they are being controlled; he warns those around him. Bernard and Helmholtz arrive, the police are called, and the three are taken away.

Comment->John recalls the words of Miranda in The Tempest, "O brave new world!" Having observed life in the World State, these words mocked him; now he hears them as a challenge to do something. He tries to warn those around him, but they refuse to listen - they do not want to change. Conditioning has made them unwilling or unable to desire freedom or to do anything to obtain it.

The difference in the reactions of Bernard and Helmholtz when they see the Savage pleading with the people to change emphasizes the differences noted earlier. Helmholtz sympathizes with John's comments on freedom and his desire to make others aware that the government of the World State has taken away their freedom, and he rushes to aid him. Bernard hesitates - he does not want to become involved.

Chapter Sixteen

Bernard, Helmholtz, and John are brought before Mustapha Mond, the World Controller. The Controller explains that since their society is organized for stability and happiness, individuality and free choice must be abolished. Both Bernard and Helmholtz are to be deported because of their unorthodox behavior and belief.

Comment->In this chapter Huxley makes known the Controller's ideas and, by inference, includes his own views of how the evolution of a World State is possible. The Controller's reference to the inability or unwillingness of the individual to act intelligently and reasonably, to the loss of individuality, and to the shift in emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness, gives emphasis to many of the comments made by thoughtful men about modern society. Huxley himself has commented on the possible consequences of these shortcomings of society in numerous essays.

Huxley believed that man was unable or unwilling to act intelligently and rationally. He was especially critical of the educated class because he believed they should take the initiative in bringing about needed social and political reform. The Cyprus experiment alluded to by the Controller seems to illustrate this point of view. In this experiment twenty-two thousand Alphas were given the opportunity to manage their own affairs - to use their superior intelligence to establish an ideal society. Within six years civil war broke out. Although given the opportunity to create a democratic Utopia, the Alphas were unable or unwilling to act independently, intelligently, and rationally, and chose, instead, to return to a system of rigid state control.

Note that in this chapter the World Controller addresses himself primarily to the Savage. Although dissatisfied with life in the World State, Bernard and Helmholtz do not know any other way of life nor any other values; only John and the Controller are able to discuss an alternate way of life and system of values. The Savage's questions about the value system of the World State and its inhabitants provide an opportunity for Huxley not only to summarize what has gone before but also to illustrate how the creation of an all-powerful World State is possible.

The Controller explains that even during the time of Ford (1932) there was a shift in emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. The people were willing, even anxious, to bring about this shift. Mass production contributed to this shift since material goods were an important aid to comfort and happiness; when the masses seized political power, it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Once the choice had been made, truth and beauty, art and science, were seen as threats to universal happiness since such inquiry can lead to dissatisfaction with the status quo. Most people are happy when they get what they want and never want what they can't get. In the World State of A.F. 632, the government provides what the people want and through conditioning prevents them from wanting what they can't have. Anyone who becomes "too self-consciously individual to fit into community life" is sent to an island lest he "contaminate" the others. 

Chapter Seventeen

The World Controller and the Savage are left alone and discuss God and philosophy. The Controller again declares that a stable society is possible only if all conflict, internal and external, is abolished - God and modern society are incompatible.

Comment->Huxley, through the World Controller, says that modern man has chosen machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness instead of God, has chosen them as substitutes for God and the religious impulse. This reference to God and the religious impulse embraces all the attributes and aspects of a human being that make him noble and fine and heroic; in the words of the Savage, "I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin." Huxley believed that since man was composed of body and soul, flesh and spirit, his life should reflect this dichotomy. Modern man's values often glorify the body and deny the spirit.

Chapter Eighteen

Bernard and Helmholtz are leaving London, but the Controller has forced the Savage to remain in the area. Seeking refuge in an abandoned lighthouse, the Savage attempts to resume his old life. He disciplines himself severely to remove the taint of the Brave New World, but the curious come to watch his strange antics and disturb the solitude he seeks and needs. Finally, in despair, he hangs himself.

Comment->The Savage attempted to duplicate his old life and his old ways - working with his hands and disciplining his mind and his body. But he could not remove the horror and corruption within or without - he could not forget Lenina, and he could not find peace and solitude. When he could no longer control his thoughts, when he could no longer be an individual, he killed himself. In the World State the choice is conformity or annihilation.

***

Character Analyses:

Director Of Hatcheries And Conditioning

The Director of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre is the first character we meet; the novel opens with the Director taking a group of students on a tour of the Centre. Note that the Director (Tomakin) is, with but two exceptions, always referred to as the Director. This emphasis on the "function" of the man is appropriate since his primary concern is the production of automatons to populate the Brave New World.

The Director is an Alpha-plus, and because of the importance of his position we might well assume that he is a very intelligent and capable man. His comments during the tour indicate that he is efficient, very businesslike, somewhat officious, and very much concerned with conformity - "The primal and the ultimate need. Stability." In fact, when the World Controller mentions history (a forbidden subject), the Director is somewhat taken aback; he recalls with some dismay the rumors that old forbidden books were hidden in a safe in the Controller's study.

Perhaps one reason Huxley portrays the Director as very conventional and scrupulously correct is to stress the irony of the Director's unconventional behavior apparent in his previous relationship with Linda. Imagine the horror and confusion he felt when everyone realizes that he is a father (horrible word). Because the Director had disgraced himself by the impropriety of his actions, he resigns. Bernard becomes a kind of hero, and we hear nothing of the Director again.

Henry Foster

One of the standard men and women who work at the Hatchery, Henry is proud of his work. He is efficient, intelligent, and, most important, "conventional." Henry does everything he is expected to do and does it well - in every way he is an ideal citizen of the World State. In the bureaucracy of the World State he is the young man "with a future" - he knows what is expected of him and does it. Henry Foster would not be classified as an important character in the novel since he does not initiate or determine action - he is most often seen as Lenina's sometime lover.

Mustapha Mond, A World Controller

As one of the ten World Controllers, Mustapha Mond provides considerable information about the creation and maintenance of the World State. He is an intelligent, capable, good-natured man whose dedication and ability we must admire even if we do not approve. His comments at the beginning of the novel, when he meets the Director and the students provide not only information about his role in the World State but also reveal something of his character.

The World Controller is one of the most important characters because he is the most intelligent and the most knowledgeable - he has read and studied the Bible, Shakespeare, history, philosophy (all forbidden books). As a young Alpha-plus, his own unconventionality necessitated a choice between life on an island (reserved for those who were "too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life") and life in the World State (being "taken on the Controller's Council with the prospect of succeeding in due course to an actual Controllership.") Because the Controller has freedom of choice - a freedom which conditioning normally inhibits or destroys - he is one of the few real individuals we meet in this novel.

In the latter part of the novel the conversation between the Controller and John the Savage is the device Huxley uses to "put across" his own ideas and concerns. When the Controller explains his values and beliefs, his arguments and explanations are clearly and logically presented; his sanity makes the insanity of the Brave New World all the more vivid and frightening. The Controller in many ways represents the intelligent, capable individual who uses his intelligence and capability for unworthy ends.

Bernard Marx

Because he is different, Bernard is the source of considerable speculation and suspicion. He does not enjoy sports (everyone is expected to); he likes to be alone (others like crowds); he is unhappy (everybody else is happy). Bernard doesn't know why he is dissatisfied, why he is different; many of his associates speculate that alcohol was accidentally put in his blood-surrogate while he was still "in the bottle."

When we first meet Bernard we see him as a rebel, a protestor, "an individual." He wants to stand up for his rights, to battle against the order of things. We later learn that Bernard questions the conformity of life in the World State and the values it teaches, but that his dissatisfaction seems to stem from his not being accepted. When he returns from the Reservation with John and Linda, he becomes a kind of hero, the girls who formerly ignored him become attentive, important personages in the World State curry his favor, and Bernard is happy and enthusiastic about his life in the World State.

Huxley indicates that Bernard's protest is not intellectual or moral, but personal and social; he willingly accepts life in the World State when he is accepted. When the novel ends we find that Bernard's fortunes have changed and he is to be deported to Iceland because of his nonconformity. Bernard protests his innocence, begs the World Controller to reconsider, and finally is carried out still shouting and sobbing.

Lenina Crowne

Young and pretty, Lenina is very popular as a sex partner, but she sometimes finds living the motto "Everybody belongs to everybody else" a little tiring. She is a happy, contented, well-adjusted citizen of the World State; she accepts its teachings and values without question. The only disconcerting element in her life is the frustration brought about by her feelings for John the Savage. Lenina finds John attractive and attempts without success to seduce him. She cannot understand his attitude regarding sex even as he cannot understand hers. Fortunately she, like the others, can escape most frustrations and unhappiness by taking Soma.

Lenina is a fairly important character because she is instrumental in bringing about the suicide of John the Savage, although we cannot in any way blame her. (She is a product of the system, and the system is wrong.) Because she is a beautiful, desirable woman, she personifies for John the conflict between the body and the spirit. In a way she repeats the conflict he felt regarding his mother - he is at one and the same time attracted and repelled by the object of his affections.

Helmholtz Watson

Intellectually, socially, and physically the ideal of his Alpha-plus caste, Helmholtz is regarded with some suspicion by his associates because he is too perfect. Like Bernard he questions the conformity of life in the World State and the values it teaches, but, unlike Bernard, his dissatisfaction stems from his feeling that there must be more to life than mere physical existence. Although not as important to the development of the novel as Bernard, Helmholtz is in many ways a more admirable character because, instead of simply talking about what he believed, he acted.

As noted earlier, in this novel Huxley expressed his pessimism regarding man and his ability to save himself; consequently none of the characters is able to bring about change. However, Helmholtz is at least willing to try. When the Savage tries to tell the people they are being controlled, Helmholtz joins forces with the Savage when a melee breaks out. Later he accepts his banishment with considerable aplomb and asks that he be sent to a cold climate since he feels such discomfort might aid his writing.

Linda

Having been decanted and conditioned a Beta and then forced by circumstances to spend some twenty years on the Reservation, Linda offers some interesting comments and contrasts. At the Reservation she is not accepted because her values and beliefs are those of the Other Place - when she returns to London, people find her repulsive and ignore her because she is fat, old-looking and unattractive. Having been conditioned a Beta, Linda cannot understand or adapt herself to life on the Reservation. But since the Reservation does not have the ultramodern medical facilities which help retard physical decay, she has grown old even as the Savages do. Her relationship with John is also ambivalent - she is horrified at the idea of being a "mother" and yet she admits that John has been a great comfort to her. Her death during a Soma-induced stupor finally provides release.

John The Savage

A curious mixture of the "old" world and the "new," John does not belong to either. He is not accepted by the Savages on the Reservation because he is "different," and he cannot and will not accept the life and values of the Other Place (London). Like Bernard, Helmholtz, and Linda, he doesn't belong - he is an alien, a misfit, a "mistake."

John is the most important character in the book because he acts as a bridge between the two cultures, and having known both "ways of life" he is able to compare them and comment on them. His beliefs and values are a curious mixture of Christian and heathen, of "Jesus and Pookong," but, most important, he has a strict moral code. His "old fashioned" beliefs about God and right and wrong (his beliefs closely duplicate Christian morality) contrast sharply with the values and beliefs of the citizens of the Brave New World ("God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness"). It is this conflict between the two value systems that ultimately brings about his suicide.

When we are first introduced to John and the Reservation Huxley makes us aware of the moral conflict, but he also makes us aware of the social and emotional conflicts. The social conflict results from his not belonging on the Reservation; his mother was the white she-dog despised by the Savages. The emotional conflict results from the attraction and repulsion he feels towards his mother - he loves her but finds her promiscuity revolting. And, too her stories of the Other Place (London) fill him with wonder and a vague discontent.

The arrival at the Reservation of Bernard and Lenina and the Savage's subsequent arrival in London contribute to the conflict he already feels. John is attracted to Lenina but feels that such lustful feelings are wrong and must be repressed; Lenina is attracted to John and cannot understand the Savage's reticence and unwillingness to show any interest in her. Finally when John protests his love and expresses his desire to marry her, Lenina considers such an entanglement absurd and scoffs at the idea. But John is unable to put her out of his mind. His love for her finally breeds hatred, and when this hate turns inward upon himself, the Savage hangs himself.

Like the others in this novel, the character of the Savage is not believable. (Huxley was not interested in creating characters; he was interested in expressing ideas.) The Savage speaks too intelligently and reasons too well for one whose education consisted of reading a few books and talking to practitioners of a combination fertility - Penitente cult. Huxley himself admitted the inconsistency. But if we accept John simply as a spokesman in another of Huxley's novels of ideas, he is more than satisfactory.

Because Brave New World is both fantasy and satire, Huxley's characters are both fantastic and satirical. They are exaggerated because the year is A.F. 632; they offer a caustic commentary because more often than not they express what we must recognize are twentieth century viewpoints. At this time (1931) Huxley was completely disillusioned with mankind and with its choice of values or lack of values - he saw no hope for man's ultimate salvation of himself. He expresses his pessimism by offering no glimmer of hope in his novel. None of his characters is able to change or to bring about change.

[gibsongirlselections]

How Intellectuals Cured ‘Tyrannophobia’

Almost 400 years ago, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote a book scoffing at tyrannophobia—the “fear of being strongly governed.” This was a peculiar term that Hobbes invented in Leviathan, since civilized nations had feared tyrants for almost 2000 years at that point. But over the past 150 years, Hobbes’ totalitarianism has been defined out of existence by apologists who believe that government needs vast, if not unlimited power. Hobbes’ revival is symptomatic of the collapse of intellectuals’ respect in individual freedom.

Writing in 1651, Hobbes labeled the State as Leviathan, “our mortal God.” Leviathan signifies a government whose power is unbounded, with a right to dictate almost anything and everything to the people under its sway. Hobbes declared that it was forever prohibited for subjects in “any way to speak evil of their sovereign” regardless of how badly power was abused. Hobbes proclaimed that “there can happen no breach of Covenant on the part of the Sovereign; and consequently none of his subjects, by any pretense of forfeiture, can be freed from his subjection.”

Hobbes championed absolute impunity for rulers: “No man that hath sovereign power can justly be put to death, or otherwise in any manner by his subjects punished.” Hobbes offered what might be called suicide pact sovereignty: to recognize a government’s existence is to automatically concede the government’s right to destroy everything in its domain. Hobbes sought to terrify readers with a portrayal of life in the “state of nature” as the “war of all against all” that made even perpetual political slavery look preferable. John Locke, in his Second Treatise of Government published a few decades later, scoffed at Hobbes’ “solution”: “This is to think that men are so foolish that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by polecats and foxes, but are content, nay think it safety, to be devoured by lions.” As Charles Tarlton, a professor at the State University of New York in Albany, noted in a superb 2001 article in The History of Political Thought, Hobbes “despotical doctrine” rests upon “an absolute and arbitrary political power joined with a moral demand for complete, simple and unquestioning political obedience and, second, the concept that no action of the sovereign can ever be unjust or even criticized.”

Hobbes’ treatise succeeded in making “Leviathan” the F-word of political discourse. In the century after Hobbes wrote, there was rarely any doubt about the political poison he sought to unleash. David Hume, writing in his History of England declared that “Hobbes’s politics were fitted only to promote tyranny.” Voltaire condemned Hobbes for making “no distinction between kingship and tyranny … With him force is everything.” Jean Jacques Rousseau condemned Hobbes for viewing humans as “herds of cattle, each of which has a master, who looks after it in order to devour it.”

Hobbes’ views were derided as long as political thought was tethered to the Earth. Unluckily for humanity, philosophers found ways to sever ties to both history and reality. The most influential political philosopher of the 19th century may have been Germany’s G.W.F. Hegel. Hegel proclaimed, “The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth” and is “the shape which the perfect embodiment of Spirit assumes.” Hegel also declared that “the State is … the ultimate end which has the highest right against the individual, whose highest duty is to be a member of the State.” Hegel had a profound influence on both communism (via Marx) and fascism. Political scientist Carl Friedrich observed in 1939, “In a slow process that lasted several generations, the modern concept of the State was … forged by political theorists as a tool of propaganda for absolute monarchs. They wished to give the king’s government a corporate halo roughly equivalent to that of the Church.”

By the twentieth century, as Tarlton noted, “Hobbes’s interpreters and commentators had worked to make Hobbes’s appalling political prescriptions more palatable.” Experts scoffed at “tyrannophobia” because they believed tyrants were necessary to “fix” humanity.

Hobbes’ revival in America was aided by John Dewey, probably the philosopher with the most impact on public policy in the first half of the 20th century. In 1918, Dewey shrugged off Hobbes’ affection for despotism: “Undoubtedly a certain arbitrariness on the part of the sovereign is made possible, [it] is part of the price paid, the cost assumed, in behalf of an infinitely greater return of good.” And why presume “an infinitely greater return of good”? Because the government would be following the prescriptions of Dewey and his intellectual cronies. Two years earlier, Dewey championed government coercion as a social curative: “No ends are accomplished without the use of force. It is consequently no presumption against a measure, political, international, jural, economic, that it involves a use of force.” Dewey declared that “squeamishness about [the use of] force is the mark not of idealistic but of moonstruck morals.”

Two decades later, Dewey discovered utopia during a visit to Moscow and proclaimed that the Soviet people “go about as if some mighty, oppressive load had been removed, as if they were newly awakened to the consciousness of released energies.” Dewey had no qualms about the artificial famine that Stalin caused in the Ukraine that killed more than five million peasants. Perhaps Dewey agreed with Stalin: “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic.”

President Franklin Roosevelt never invoked Hobbes but his Hobbesian approach to power made FDR a darling of the intelligentsia. In his first inaugural address, FDR called for a Hobbesian-like total submission to Washington: “We now realize… that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership can become effective.” The military metaphors and call for everyone to march in lockstep was similar to rhetoric used by European dictators at the time. Roosevelt sometimes practically portrayed the State as a god. In his 1936 acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, he declared, “In the place of the palace of privilege we seek to build a temple out of faith and hope and charity.” In 1937, he praised the members of political parties for respecting “as sacred all branches of their government.” In the same speech, Roosevelt assured listeners, in terms Hobbes would approve, “Your government knows your mind, and you know your government’s mind.”

As governments throughout the western world seized vastly more power, British professors took the lead in consecrating Hobbes. In 1938, on the eve of World War Two, British philosopher A.E. Taylor wrote an influential book that bizarrely proclaimed “that, in spite of his absolutist leanings, what Hobbes is trying to express by the aid of his legal fictions is the great democratic idea of self-government.” Eight years later, Michael Oakeshott, one of favorite British philosophers of American conservatives, hailed Leviathan as “the greatest, perhaps the sole masterpiece of political philosophy written in the English language.” Oakeshott assured readers that “we need not greatly concern ourselves” about critics who warned of Hobbes’ dark side because Hobbes’ vision “could never amount to despotism.” Signaling the total vanquishing of classical liberal interpretations, a major academic review of recent writings on Hobbes declared in 1982 that “seeing Leviathan as tyranny is now only to be found in new editions of old books.”

In the United States, many liberals display a Hobbesian love of vast government power.

University of Chicago professor Stephen Holmes gushed in his 1995 book, Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of Liberal Democracy: “It now seems obvious that [contemporary Statist] liberalism can occasionally eclipse authoritarianism as a technique for accumulating political power…. For good or ill, liberalism is one of the most effective philosophies of state building ever contrived.” Holmes hailed Hobbes as a “pre-liberal”—which makes as much sense as touting Hitler as a “post-liberal.”

“Leviathan” has long since lost its onus among the academic elite. In 2012, Princeton University professor John Ikenberry’s Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order was published. The publisher, Princeton University Press, summarized the book: “In the second half of the twentieth century, the United States engaged in the most ambitious and far-reaching liberal order building the world had yet seen. This liberal international order has been one of the most successful in history.” Tell that to the Iraqis, Afghans, Libyans, Somalians, and many other victims of U.S. foreign policy. Writing recently in the Washington Post, DePaul University political science professor David Lay Williams hailed Leviathan as “perhaps the greatest work of political philosophy ever written in English.” DePaul is finishing a book titled, The Greatest of All Plagues: Economic Inequality in Western Political Thought, so perhaps he favors tyranny as the cure for inequality.

Especially since 9/11, America has suffered presidents who acted entitled to Hobbesian-levels of unlimited power. Bush administration lawyers secretly decided that neither federal law nor the Constitution could limit the power of the president, who was even entitled to declare martial law in America at his whim. President Barack Obama promised to restore civil liberties but vastly expanded illegal surveillance, bombed seven nations, boosted drone attacks by 500%, and claimed a prerogative to kill American terror suspects without a trial. President Donald Trump proclaimed earlier this year, “When somebody is President of the United States, his authority is total.” Trump neglected to clear his statement with the ghost of James Madison, the father of the Constitution.

The issue here is not the reputation of one long-dead philosopher but the seachange in verdicts on tyranny. The more powerful government becomes, the more homage Leviathan receives from professors and pundits. Will average citizens recognize the folly of a bunch of intellectual lemmings plunging over a cliff?  As Professor Carlton warned, “The theory of Hobbes is a theory of unadulterated despotism, or it is nothing.” Is it too much to ask the champions of despotism to cease pretending to be friends of liberty?

James Bovard is the author of Lost Rights, Attention Deficit Democracy, and Public Policy Hooligan. He is also a USA Today columnist. Follow him on Twitter @JimBovard.

The post How Intellectuals Cured ‘Tyrannophobia’ appeared first on The American Conservative.

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THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW APPLIED

There are various versions of the natural rights perspective, but this blog has focused on the original version attributed to the philosophy of John Locke, how that version was interpreted in America during the time of the writing of the US Constitution in 1787, and the contemporary version which is noted for its lack of substantive normative elements.  

Locke wrote of the moral superiority of hard work as he rallied readers to oppose the privileged position of the nobility in Britain of the late 1600s – a group called the “no ability” by Thomas Paine.  Today’s version simply holds that valuing hard work is up to the individual to accept or reject.

Of course, the later version is what has become dominant in how the nation defines its politics and many of its social views.  If one accepts this description, one can readily imagine how deduced and associated values affect relations between and among people from family situations to boardroom discussions.  This blog used a plot line from a show, Men of a Certain Age,[1] to illustrate how natural rights thinking prevails as a family deals with a common issue.

The plot begins when the main character, a divorced father who has custody of his teenaged daughter, comes home unexpectedly to find her in a compromising position with her boyfriend.  A vibrant “conversation” ensues between the father and the daughter and among the topics that pop up is individual rights.  By engaging in this discussion, father and daughter demonstrate how politically defined principles affect domestic, homebound concerns.

         If one shifts one’s attention from family situations to the economy, the influence is more direct.  Capitalist or free market approach to economics is morally based on natural rights arguments, demonstrating how the natural rights perspective is actualized in this very important institution.  

Perhaps these moral elements do not become more passionately expressed than when the economy is in duress as it was in 2008, highlighting many of the moral issues in which defenders and opponents of this view debated what should be done or not done.  The prospect of losing millions of jobs in a relatively short amount of time will make any person review and reevaluate what he/she believes is good and evil.

One cannot deny the enormous wealth that capitalist/free market economies have been able to create.  The attributes of free market allow people to overcome the obstacles that keep them economically constrained.  They embolden people to actively seek and discover what their interests are and find ways to advance them.

Despite exploitive conditions that early factory workers or miners sustained, over the longer term, more people benefited by instituting free markets in the industrial age.  Why? Because in a capitalist economy each person looks after his or her own interests by the means he or she chooses to pursue.  When so engaged, in a system of competition, a person is motivated to act productively and efficiently to maximize his/her interests.  Accumulatively, the interests of the greater society are also advanced – at least most of the time.

Where a liberty-based morality holds, as is the case with a free market society, a people will tend to prohibit attempts to interfere with the workings of such a system – even when the economy is in danger of collapse as it was in ’08. Defenders of free market system might be motivated to exert such a prohibition for financial reasons, but many do so for moral reasons as well.  

Among its defenders, there are those – the purists – who argue for unrestrained markets.  For example, there are libertarians who claim that an integral aspect of capitalist systems is the tenet that individuals who have the freedom to make their own choices should be held accountable for those choices.  When government bails out those who have freely chosen to pursue counterproductive options, it promotes the entailed “foolishness” and all the counterproductive consequences such behaviors produce.  This is immoral in their estimations.

But not all defenders of free markets agree. There are those who might consider themselves as moderates.  Usually, moderates see a role for government in free market economies.  They might even see that role as moral as when the government bailed out certain segments of the economy in 2008 such as the banks and the auto industry.  Without government action, the economy would have probably collapsed into a world depression causing untold human misery.  For them, such a turn would have been immoral.

Therefore, such a governmental role was considered justified – if not the particulars of what was done in ’08 – by most of the populous. The qualifier is, to see such interference as legitimate, a person needs to compromise pure natural rights values, at least as they are currently defined.  In a free market society, though, the burden to justify such government interference lies with those who propose it.

To summarize, purists, those who abide by uncompromised natural rights beliefs – i.e. in a belief in unfettered individualism and free markets – approach a near hands-off posture by government.  They oppose most governmental programs such as Social Security.  This bias is so ingrained that people such as libertarians see interference by government as immoral.

On the other hand, those who basically agree that people should be left to their own devices in identifying and seeking their interests and believe people should be able to own and control property such as businesses, also believe government is there to help with those cases in which either the individual or the economy fails.  They tolerate some restraints and, beyond that, government programs that help those who might find themselves at a level of destitution.  After all, given the vicissitudes of life, anyone can be so afflicted.  

It is over these diverse views that much of the nation’s political debates occur.  That is, most political disagreements revolve around how strongly citizens hold natural rights values.  Currently, the debate over healthcare reflects how purists and moderates are pitted against each other.  

Those who are purer in their natural rights beliefs are considered conservative voters[2] and those who see a place for economic restraints, socialist programs such as Social Security and welfare programs, are considered liberals (albeit, the term liberal is somewhat confusing in that natural rights beliefs are based on classical liberal philosophy) or progressives. To see this division at play, one need only watch the evening news.

[1] Mike Royce and Ray Romano, Men of a Certain Age, Ray Romano (2009; Hollywood, CA:  TNT) television series.

 [2] Conservatism is not limited to this standard.  Social conservatives – those who tend to be pro-religion – are also considered conservative voters and might even disagree with economic conservatives about how anti-government they are in relation to economic activity.