The Nature of Human Nature in Hobbes and Rousseau

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Noble Savage ◽  
Natural Man ◽  
Important Sense

This chapter examines the similarities and divergences between Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau with regard to their account of human nature. It begins with a discussion of Hobbes's science of human nature, which is part of his science of nature in general. Hobbes's psychology is in principle reducible to physiology, and ultimately to physics. Self-maintenance is the major imperative facing the Hobbesian man. The chapter then considers Rousseau's claims, which he articulated in the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, that men without society must be mere isolated animals. For Rousseau, natural man is not the noble savage, nor is he Hobbes's rational egoist. Both these conditions are social conditions and, in an important sense, nonnatural. There is a good deal of straightforward Hobbes-like utilitarianism in the Social Contract.

scholarly journals The Body Politic “is a fictitious body”

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 126-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Douglass
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Social Contract Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Religious Imagery ◽  
Central Purpose

Thomas Hobbes once wrote that the body politic “is a fictitious body”, thereby contrasting it with a natural body. In this essay I argue that a central purpose of Hobbes’s political philosophy was to cast the fiction of the body politic upon the imaginations of his readers. I elucidate the role of the imagination in Hobbes’s account of human nature, before examining two ways in which his political philosophy sought to transform the imaginations of his audience. The first involved effacing the false ideas that led to sedition by enlightening men from the kingdom of spiritual darkness. I thus advance an interpretation of Hobbes’s eschatology focused upon his attempt to dislodge certain theological conceptions from the minds of men. The second involved replacing this religious imagery with the fiction of the body politic and the image of the mortal God, which, I argue, Hobbes developed in order to transform the way that men conceive of their relationship with the commonwealth. I conclude by adumbrating the implications of my reading for Hobbes’s social contract theory and showing why the covenant that generates the commonwealth is best understood as imaginary.

Thomas Hobbes's Materialism, Language, and the Possibility of Politics

2008 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Dungey
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
First Principles ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Obligation ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Social

AbstractThomas Hobbes sought a reconstruction of philosophy, ethics, and politics that would end, once and for all, the bitter disputes that led to the English Civil War. This reconstruction begins with the first principles of matter and motion and extends to a unique account of consent and political obligation. Hobbes intended to produce a unified philosophical system linking his materialist account of human nature to his moral and political theory. However, his materialism gives rise to a set of perceptions, imagination, and desires that contribute to the chaos of the state of nature. The sort of person that emerges from Hobbes's materialist anthropology is unlikely to be able to make the necessary agreements about common meaning and language that constitute the ground of the social contract. Therefore, Hobbes's materialism frustrates the very purpose for which it is conceived.

scholarly journals Policing Environmental Injustice

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Brock ◽  
Nathan Stephens-Griffin
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Open Space ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Environmental Injustice ◽  
Equal Distribution ◽  
Nature And Society

Environmental justice (EJ) activists have long worked with abolitionists in their communities, critiquing the ways policing, prisons, and pollution are entangled and racially constituted (Braz and Gilmore 2006). Yet, much EJ scholarship reflects a liberal Western focus on a more equal distribution of harms, rather than challenging the underlying systems of exploitation these harms rest upon (Álvarez and Coolsaet 2020). This article argues that policing facilitates environmentally unjust developments that are inherently harmful to nature and society. Policing helps enforce a social order rooted in the ‘securing’ of property, hierarchy, and human-nature exploitation. Examining the colonial continuities of policing, we argue that EJ must challenge the assumed necessity of policing, overcome the mythology of the state as ‘arbiter of justice’, and work to create social conditions in which policing is unnecessary. This will help open space to question other related harmful hegemonic principles. Policing drives environmental injustice, so EJ must embrace abolition.

The Epicureans on Human Nature and its Social and Political Consequences

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Jan Maximilian Robitzsch
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Contract Theory ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Social Contract Theory ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
The Social

Based on certain passages in Colotes, Hermarchus, and Horace, the Epicureans may be thought to defend a social contract theory that is roughly Hobbesian. According to such a view, human life without the social contract is solitary and brutish. This paper argues that such a reading is mistaken. It offers a systematic analysis of Lucretius’s culture story in On the Nature of Things v as well as the Epicurean passages that at first sight seem to contradict the Lucretian account. The conclusion of such an analysis is not only that all extant evidence is internally consistent, but also that Epicurean social contract theory relies on a ‘dynamic’ conception of human nature: On the Epicurean view, agents have very different psychological motivations when coming together to form societies and when coming together to form political and legal states.

Nietzsche

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. A. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The Other ◽  
Baruch Spinoza ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Genealogy Of Morals ◽  
Moral Philosophers

This chapter examines Friedrich Nietzsche's moral philosophy, first by explaining what makes him different from most of the other moral philosophers such as David Hume, Thomas Hobbes, the Greeks, and Baruch Spinoza. It then considers Nietzsche's notion of good and evil by addressing three questions: How do we find out what sort of creatures men are? How do we decide what sort of creature man ought to be? Is it possible for man to transform himself into that sort of creature. It also discusses the problem faced by Nietzsche in his attempts to assess human nature, namely: what is to count as health in the spiritual dimension, when is a soul diseased, what is mens sana. Finally, it analyzes the main arguments put forward by Nietzsche in his two books Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals.

Part I International Law and Global Security, Ch.7 Global Security and Neurophilosophy: Understanding the Human Factor

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Al-Rodhan Nayef ◽  
Puscas Ioana-Maria
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Global Security ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Intellectual Origins ◽  
Peace And Security

This chapter evaluates the fundamental starting point in political theory: human nature. In doing so, it goes beyond conventional wisdom in International Relations. To understand conflict and to chart a way forward, we must re-examine our understanding of human nature. The two dominant theories of International Relations, Realism and Idealism/Internationalism, derived their intellectual origins from such contrasting and dichotomous views of human nature. One, exemplified by Thomas Hobbes, was pessimistic both about human nature and States. The other, exemplified by Immanuel Kant and to some extent Jean-Jacques Rousseau, believed in an innate perfectibility of humans, of States and the international society, which would evolve towards peace. Today, a growing body of evidence from neuroscience permits the re-examination of long-held claims about human nature and what it is that truly drives and motivates human behaviour. Neurophilosophy, the interdisciplinary field connecting findings from neuroscience and philosophy, is relevant for global security and for understanding what can propel good governance, peace, and security.

Moral Enhancement, Gnosticism, and Some Philosophical Paradoxes

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. M. BARILAN
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Prosocial Behavior ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Preventive Measure ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Moral Enhancement ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up

Abstract:This article examines the concept of moral enhancement from two different perspectives. The first is a bottom-up approach, which aims at identifying fundamental moral traits and subcapacities as targets for enhancement. The second perspective, a top-down approach, is holistic and in line with virtue ethics. Both perspectives lead to the observation that alterations of material and social conditions are the most reliable means to improve prosocial behavior overall.Moral enhancement as a preventive measure invokes Gnostic narratives on the allegedly fallen status of human nature, its search for salvation, and the dependence of the laity on heteronomous salvific interventions. The allure of the preventive kind of enhancement is attributable to its religious hues.Owing to the absence of clarity regarding moral enhancement and of metrics to evaluate its progress, humanity is at risk of prioritizing unclear and unsubstantiated measures of preventive diminishment at the expense of celebrating human capacities and joys.

Global Standards and Social Contracts: The Political Economy of Bibliographic Description

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant D. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Semantic Web ◽  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Contracts ◽  
Classical Political Economy ◽  
Global Standards ◽  
The Web

This paper compares information description in library cataloguing, the Semantic Web and the Web 2.0. It relates them to three separate but related principles in classical political economy: Thomas Hobbes’s state of nature, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s social contract, and Adam Smith’s invisible hand.Cette communication compare la description de l’information dans les catalogues bibliographiques, le Web sémantique et le Web 2.0. Ces pratiques sont mis en relief avec trois principes distincts, mais connexes de l’économie politique classique : l’état de la nature de Thomas Hobbes, le contrat social de Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la main invisible d’Adam Smith.

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