Philosophy Revision!

Philosophy Revision – Hobbes’ Leviathan and Machiavelli

The Leviathan argues that to achieve peace and social unity a commonwealth must be established, this would be created through the social contract. This is important because life is, according to Hobbes, ‘nasty, brutish and short’. This can be linked to Machiavelli insofar as he states that men are all wicked and therefore you can see a link with their ideas on human nature – they both have a highly pessimistic view on it.

The Commonwealth is to be lead by a sovereign power (the sovereign power = the Leviathan). The Leviathan is portrayed as a person – the head is the sovereign and the body is the people. This is important because it is needed to ensure a common defence. Machiavelli shows to be similar to Hobbes with his idea of a dictatorial leader; however there is a difference, this is a need for an absolute monarchy which will in turn creates national independence, security and a solid constitution.

Hobbes states that a leader can be challenged if they fail to protect citizens and uphold social unity, whereas on the other hand Machiavelli’s ‘Prince’ is far to deterministic, insofar as it assumes there will be no issues with the leadership so it leaves no room for a rebellion. While Hobbes states that the leader has to be noble and act accordingly to maintain peace and social unity, in ‘The Prince’ it states that the leader doesn't have to be noble, as “a ruler will perish if he is always good”. Machiavelli goes on to promote the idea of being an advocate of religion, as a way to share the faith with the people. Hobbes doesn't promote the idea of religion because he believes the sovereign must be the head of the state and not some belief in religion.

While Hobbes disagrees with the religious aspects of this, they both believe that humans are naturally selfish and only care about self-preservation. Hobbes pessimistic view on human natures means that he believes that the one and most important human right is the right to self preservation – and from this people try and find peace which allows the social contract to be formed. Machiavelli agrees with this and this is backed up by his quote on how self-centred humans are “men forget the death of their fathers more easily than the loss of inheritance”. From this we can see that Hobbes’ ideas put forward in the leviathan and Machiavelli’s ideas put forward in The Prince can be related, mostly when it comes to their views on human nature.

Philosophy Revision – John Locke’s theories of Government:

Locke is highly against the monarchy, this is because the people in power could easily abuse their powers and turn it into a dictatorship. Therefore he despised the idea of the ‘Divine Right of Kings’ because the King or Queen could hide behind the defence that they were chosen by God and therefore going against them would be to defy God.

Locke has a very optimistic view on human nature; this is reflected through his views on the state of nature. In Locke’s state of nature he believed that people would naturally co-operate and respect each other, so he believes that the monarchy should be naturally selfless - do everything in the interest of the people and do nothing for self gain. He believes that all men are born equal so if this was the case then no-one could be born into the monarchy and so on. This is linked to Locke’s idea that people are born as blank slates – this means that we have no innate knowledge of the outside world, our knowledge has to be shaped by experience and through our senses; therefore, people have to earn the right to be leaders and no-one can be born “higher up” than anyone.

Locke does however believe that a government is necessary; this is mainly to try and solve or avoid any crimes or disputes about property. In Locke’s state of nature he claims that it is acceptable to kill people if they are protecting their property, although he also states that the government should stop such acts from being committed but goes on to say that the government should also advocate sticking to the natural laws wherever possible.

He believes that the government should be one of consent and this is his social contract theory. This is the idea that in order to live peacefully and protected people have to surrender a small amount of their freedom to the state in order for them to intervene in their lives. To ensure that the government doesn't get too powerful it also has limitations placed on it, it is mostly in place to protect people’s property and possessions.

Locke believes that there must be a separation of powers when it comes to government, so that the monarchy, government and the legislature are all kept separate, this creates a balance and stops one power from getting too grand.

Philosophy Revision – Descartes and Plato:

Descartes – He believes that there is very little evidence to suggest that the world as it appears is the world as it actually is. Descartes is highly sceptical in the existence of anything except for one’s own existence in some form. He came up with the Cogito – “I think therefore I am” this explains that by having any kind of thought process must mean you exist, but in what context we can pretty much never be sure, as everything that we are seeing could just be in our minds (yes matrix). Descartes also mentions the idea of a ‘demon’ trying to deceive you from what is reality and what is not.

Plato – Theory of the Cave; mankind are blind to the world while they are trapped inside this cave and the world outside is the real world. The people in the cave watch their lives play out in the form of shadows and outside of the save lays the true forms of what they see. When someone steps out of the cave and into the light they become enlightened and can see the world as it really is. We can experience the material world when we perceive the transcendent realm of the forms; this suggests that the material world is not our real reality.

Philosophy Revision – Hume: Deduction, Induction, Apriori, Aposteriori

Apriori knowledge can be understood without any previous knowledge or experience, for example, you will just know that by definition 'all bachelors are unmarried'.

Aposteriori knowledge, on the other hand, requires some experience or empirical evidence to understand that for example, 'some bachelors are happy'. Aposteriori knowledge alludes to a person’s experience; but the issue concerns how you know the claim in question.

Inductive Reasoning (Empirical knowledge) = reasoning derived from facts to figure out the cause, for example if you hit a white billiard ball, it then hits the yellow ball, the yellow ball will have moved. From this we can see that the yellow ball has moved because you have hit the white ball into it.

Deductive Reasoning = arguments that attempt to show a conclusion necessarily follows from a hypothesis. A deductive argument is valid if the conclusion does follow unavoidably from the hypothesis. For example:

1) All men are mortal

2) Socrates is a man

3) Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

Here all objects classified as "men" have been given the quality "mortal". The second premise states that "Socrates" is classified as a man. Therefore we can conclude that “Socrates" has to be mortal as he gains this attribute due to his classification as a man.

One major problem that Hume had was the problem of Induction, stating that all science is a logical fallacy - The Induction Fallacy: just because something happened in the past doesn't mean that it will happen again, it doesn't matter how often it seems to happen. You can’t say that all apples are green because when someone shows you a red apple your whole argument is destroyed.

Hume is highly sceptical of all things; he took Locke’s idea of Empiricism and took it to the very extreme. This scepticism is over Apriori and aposteriori; this is because Apriori can be understood by logic without any observed facts and are therefore logical truths. Hume states that they are discoverable by the mere operation of thought and their denials are inconceivable. Hume then goes on to describe aposteriori as matters of fact; these are the opposite of ideas and some facts that are already in place.

Hume was so sceptical of induction he went as far as saying that we could never be sure that we even exist or we could never be sure that the sun will rise tomorrow. Logically the sun may not rise, but we know that it is a fact that can’t really be proven.