Locke, Hume, & Rousseau Revisited

Personal Archives | 04-20-02 | PsyOp

[lockeliberty]

"He who will not leave all and not look back is not fit for the Kingdom of Heaven."

Exactly!

It is a matter of the heart and not a matter of possessions

[lockeliberty]

A person with the political philosophy perspective will look at each philosopher in sum or in sum as it relates to a political philosophy.

A persons political philosophy will be largely shaped by their cosmology(worldview) and therefore it is important to understand what undergirds a philosophers politics.

Check out this Thread for a more detailed understanding of Locke's cosmology.

[PsyOp]

Three evil bastards.

Care to explain?

[PsyOp]

French Impressionist.

Got it, thanks. Nice picture... for a frog imppressionist. I usually can't tell what they're trying to paint by looking at their pictures.

[PsyOp]

The doctrine of the assassins is what has governed our history, and you are their "useful idiots."

Ah... there it is. Somehow I knew your explanation was going to involve name-calling - the hallmark of the uneducated. Run along now, I'm sure there's an anti-SomethingOrOther protest you need to attend.

[GOPcapitalist]

Thomas Hobbes, and later John Locke, are philosophers who established philosophical ideals that are the basis for Modern Western Civilization.

You know, that isn't necessarily a good thing.

Locke set the groundwork from which Hume (in an inherently irrational philosophy, IMHO) went on to logically deny the existence of causality, universality, and pretty much everything beyond an extreme version empiricist skepticism. It is out of this extreme skepticism, and inherent to them, that the present day post-modernist left wing wackos emerged - the people who argue for moral relativism, claim that nothing is absolute, and point to "cultural diversity" (as long as its non-western) as an answer for everything and an excuse to do anything.

And then there is Hobbes, the famous 'Monster of Malmsbury,' who completes the picture by giving those same left wing wackos a pass with which they go about enforcing and promoting their wacky socialist post-modernist agendas: might makes right.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

...Hobbes, the famous 'Monster of Malmsbury,' who completes the picture by giving those same left wing wackos a pass with which they go about enforcing and promoting their wacky socialist post-modernist agendas: might makes right.

Hobbes wanted an end to sectarian fighting within Christendom. In his Leviathan might does make right, but under the monarch whom the subjects owe for their protection. Hobbes also believed in a hegemony (a Christian one). Also, don't forget the time in which he lived.

I'm not saying I agreed with Hobbes. However, he did have some very clear ideas that still apply to today's world of politics. I think his attitude concerning Palestine (Israel) is how we should see the situation. (See my earlier comment.)

[ned]

Thanks for the great post.

Locke wrote the "Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina" in 1669. It consisted of 120 separate provisions, the last of which provided that it could never be amended:

One hundred and twenty. These fundamental constitutions, in number a hundred and twenty, and every part thereof, shall be and remain the sacred and unalterable form and rule of government of Carolina forever.

And as if that wasn't enough, another provision sought to insure that no one would even prepare or read written discussions or descriptions of this permanent constitution:

Eighty. Since multiplicity of comments, as well as of laws, have great inconveniencies, and serve only to obscure and perplex, all manner of comments and expositions on any part of these fundamental constitutions, or on any part of the common or statute laws of Carolina, are absolutely prohibited.

Pretty ambitious document! I don't think it lasted for more than about 20 years, as I recall.

[PsyOp]

Sounds like a current member of the DNC. Or perhaps a McCainiac.

[ned]

I guess you'd have to have a certain view of history and progress to think that it is possible to create an "unalterable form and rule of government of Carolina forever." I think it seems so strange to us now because we are a little more accustomed to seeing the rapidity and invevitability of change.

I guess he figured that once you write a perfect constitution, there's no need for any changes.

Ever.

[PsyOp]

I guess he figured that once you write a perfect constitution, there's no need for any changes. Ever.

He wasn't necessarily wrong, its just that the perfect constitution didn't show up for another 115 years. Now, if we could just convince Congress to quite F***ing with it.

[GOPcapitalist]

Hobbes wanted an end to sectarian fighting within Christendom. In his Leviathan might does make right, but under the monarch whom the subjects owe for their protection. Hobbes also believed in a hegemony (a Christian one). Also, don't forget the time in which he lived.

I think a reasonable argument could be made that Hobbes' view of God was exactly that, a necessary product of the time in which he lived. Though he asserted religion, it is largely the case that Hobbes' own concept of God was that of only an empty noise.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

I think a reasonable argument could be made that Hobbes' view of God was exactly that, a necessary product of the time in which he lived. Though he asserted religion, it is largely the case that Hobbes' own concept of God was that of only an empty noise.

You may be partially right. But, considering these three passages (following) from Leviathan, it would seem that Hobbes was definately Protestant in his views and did see a spiritual manifestation in the physical world, Hobbes was a materialist. I think he saw the spiritual essence of life as having a physical reality to it, that God was actually a person living on the earth (in the form of Christ) and the spirit of God was also physically manifested in the faithful...

From Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan:

Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth. Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.

[12] And first, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.

[13] And because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant the enemy of them that shall be in the kingdom of God, therefore if the kingdom of God after the resurrection be upon the earth (as in the former Chapter I have shewn by Scripture it seems to be), the Enemy and his kingdom must be on earth also. For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in Palestine, and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy; and consequently, by Satan is meant any earthly enemy of the Church.

Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness. Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness.

[21] For from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretense of successsion to St. Peter, their whole hiearchy (or kingdom of darkness) may be compared to the kingdom of fairies (that is, to the old wives' fables in England, concerning ghosts and spirits and the feats they play in the night). And if a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily percieve that the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. For so did the Papacy start up on a sudden out of the ruins of that heathen empire.

[23] The fairies, in what nation soever they converse, have but one universal king, which some poets of ours call King Oberon; but the Scripture calls Beelzebub, prince of demons. The ecclesiastics likewise, in whose dominions soever they be found, acknowledge but one universal king, the Pope.

Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness

Chap. xlv. Of Demonology and other Relics of the Religion of the Gentiles

[16] And whereas a man can fancy shapes he never saw, making up a figure out of the parts of divers creatures, as the poets make their centaurs, chimeras and other monsters never seen, so can he also give matter to those shapes, and make them in wood, clay or metal. And these are also called images, not for the resemblance of any corporeal thing, but for the resemblance of some phantastical inhabitants of the brain of the maker. But in these idols, as they are originally in the brain, and as they are painted, carved moulded or molten in matter, there is a similitude of one to the other, for which the material body made by art may be said to be the image of the fantastical idol made by nature.