Thomas Hobbes and John Locke represent the beginning of political science in the seventeenth century‚their ideas on what government should or shouldn’t do would be refined by Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers thus becoming the basis of the constitutional democracy of the United States. Hobbes took a very different approach than Locke in what he thought of humans in general;the same goes for political matters. He thought people were savages when born and only under someone else’s leadership
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John Locke Questions 1. John Locke describes the “state of nature” as a sort of equality between men. No man has any rights over the other‚ and they can be free in doing what they want. All being able to use the same faculties. Locke also explains that although they are free it does not give them the right to hurt one another because the “natural law” still exists even through the “state of nature”. Locke defines the state of nature as political power. This “state of nature” is basically where humans
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influencing two famous philosophical men. Thomas Hobbes‚ author of Leviathan‚ and John Locke‚ author of Second Treatise on Civil Government‚ drew on their experiences of England’s monarchical turmoil to conceive very different political theories. Both Thomas Hobbes and John Locke were prominent political philosophers in the
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I agree with John Rawls that creating a hypothetical contract behind a “veil of ignorance” is the ideal way of viewing justice. First‚ Rawls argues that this method creates “principles of justice untainted by differences of bargaining power or knowledge” (203). To clarify why I also believe this is the correct position to take‚ I will define what Rawls means by a “veil of ignorance.” He explains this term saying‚ “[Parties] do not know how the various alternatives will affect their own particular
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John Locke was a British Philosopher born on 1632 and died in 1704. He wrote The Two Treatises of Government which was a major contribution to political theory. He defended the belief that ”that man are by nature free and equal against claims that God had made all people naturally subject to a monarch‚” (Tuckness 2005). In other words‚ he is saying that someone isn’t chosen to rule by God but we all have equal rights. What locke means by natural rights is the right to life‚ liberty and‚ property
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John Locke said that it is very important for society as well as a place for government to have a grasp and control on its people‚ by being able to us land and private property as limits toward various extents. For Marx‚ he was on the other hand very against
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John Locke’s influence in modern philosophy has been profound and‚ with his application of experimental analysis to ethics‚ politics‚ and religion‚ he remains one of the most important and controversial philosophers of all time. His ideas and writings lived way beyond his time‚ and have proven to be the reason the colonies broke away from their mother country and learned to expect certain rights from their government. In The Second Treatise of Government‚ Locke defines political power as the inalienable
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integral to understanding the political theories of both John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau. Both Locke and Rousseau begin their social contract theories in the state of nature. The state of nature‚ as explained by Locke‚ is “a state of perfect freedom” wherein people are at liberty to “order their actions‚ and dispose of their possessions and persons‚ as they think fit‚ within the bounds of the law of nature” and are not dependent on one another. Locke states that people have the natural right to life
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Justice as Fairness John Rawls responds to the question of justice with his own theory of Liberalism. Liberalism utilizes a social contract as a conceptual basis from which moral reasoning can be considered just. Rawls claims that the best way to look at morality is by referring to the principles‚ which govern society‚ based on an initial situation of equality. He explains this initial situation of equality by proposing a hypothetical original position: “The guiding idea is that the principles of
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John Rawls bases his Theory of Justice on the intuitive conviction that justice as fairness is the first virtue of social institutions. He argues that in order to ensure fair distributions of advantages in society‚ a workable set of principles are required in order to determine how institutions ought to distribute rights and duties and to establish a clear way to address competing claims to social advantages. The second principle that Rawls develops stipulates that economic and social inequalities
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