scholarly journals Phenomena of freedom and justice in the interpretations of T. Hobbes and J. Locke

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (42) ◽  
pp. 255-263
Author(s):  
Yevgen Borinshtein ◽  
Oleksandr Stovpets ◽  
Olga Kukshinova ◽  
Anton Kisse ◽  
Natalia Kucherenko

This study gives a possible representation of T. Hobbes and J. Locke's visions of the essence of 'freedom' and 'justice' phenomena. The philosophic-historical analysis performed in the article made it possible to reveal the fundamental ideological conflict between statism and liberalism, between the utilitarian, entirely pragmatic understanding the nature of the social contract (in Hobbes's political philosophy), and moral-ethical accents on the essential foundations of a state-organized society (in Locke's political thoughts). Hobbes generally ignores the moral and ethical preconditions inherent to human nature, reducing the social contract ontology to purely utilitarian aspects. The freedom of the individual loses its absolute character, as each member of this socio-political community gives up a part of his freedom in favor of 'Leviathan' (i.e. the sovereign, the state). Beginning from this moment it is fair for each individual to comply with the terms of that universally binding social contract, and its violation by someone within the community deemed to be unjust. On the contrary, Locke forms an idea of the ethical basis of the human community. Locke's political anthropology is based on the close relationship between the principle of justice and the imperatives of reason. The latter ones approach the universal ethical and legal requirements to ensure equal opportunities in the implementation and protection of freedoms and interests of the individual living in society. Under such conditions, justice means that a person acquires the maximum opportunities to fulfill his own freedoms (in all its diversity), without violating the freedoms of others.

Author(s):  
Laura Monsalve Lorente

ABSTRACTSchools with families are socializing areas where it takes place the development of people in their early stages, exerting an important role in the configuration of behavior and social values of children and adolescents. When we consider the health as understood by the WHO, that is, as a state of complete physical, mental and social wellness and not only as the absence of disease we see that the attainment of good educational results by a school save a very close relationship with the attainment of optimal levels of health within the educational community. According to this fact schools that incorporate the health promotion as part of its educational are building the bases that will enable them better achieve the educational objectives, including academics. On the other hand in this time of life people are more receptive to learning being the time of the vital development which are acquired the major lifestyle that will be consolidated over the years (physical activity, diet, etc.). Also this is an area of social intervention that have health agents which have highly qualified from the pedagogical point of view: teachers, whether in the kindergarten level, and Primary and Secondary level. In this context the main objective of the Health Education, is to develop activities and encourage the students to achieve the highest attainable standard of health, through the acquisition of knowledge and skills that promote choice and adoption of healthy lifestyles; Seeking participation, interaction and social integration, and the ability to work critically and creatively, and the search for solutions. Schools, with the home are two of the key places where it takes place the individual and social development of people in its earliest stages, exerting an important role the configuration of the conduct and the social values of childhood, adolescence and youth.RESUMENLos centros educativos junto con el hogar, son los ámbitos socializadores clave donde tiene lugar el desarrollo de las personas en sus estadios más tempranos, ejerciendo un importante papel en la configuración de la conducta y los valores sociales de la infancia y la adolescencia. Cuando se considera la salud como la entiende la OMS, es decir, como un estado de completo bienestar físico, mental y social y no solamente como la ausencia de enfermedad, vemos que el logro de buenos resultados educativos por parte de un centro educativo guarda una relación muy estrecha con la consecución de unos niveles óptimos de salud en el seno de su comunidad educativa. De acuerdo con esta realidad, las escuelas que incorporan la promoción de la salud como parte integrante de su planteamiento educativo, están construyendo las bases que les permitirán alcanzar mejor los objetivos educativos, incluidos los académicos. Por otro lado, en esta época de la vida, las personas se hallan más receptivas para el aprendizaje, siendo la época del desarrollo vital en la que se adquieren los principales hábitos de vida que se consolidarán con los años (actividad física, alimentación, etc.). Además se trata de un ámbito de intervención social que cuenta con agentes de salud que disponen de alta calificación desde el punto de vista pedagógico: el profesorado, ya sea en el nivel de educación Infantil, como en Primaria y Secundaria. En este marco, el principal objetivo de la Educación para la salud, es desarrollar actividades e incentivar al alumnado para conseguir el mayor grado posible de salud, mediante la adquisición de conocimientos y habilidades que favorezcan la elección y adopción de estilos de vida saludables; buscando la participación, la interacción y la integración social, y trabajando la capacidad crítica y creativa, así como la búsqueda de soluciones. Los Centros escolares, junto con el hogar, son dos de los lugares clave donde tiene lugar el desarrollo individual y social de las personas en sus estadios más tempranos, ejerciendo un importante papel en la configuración de la conducta y los valores sociales de la infancia, la adolescencia y la juventud.


Author(s):  
Zoe Beenstock

Coleridge wrote frequently about Rousseau throughout his varied career. His early lectures and letters draw on Rousseau’s critique of luxury and frequently allude to the general will, depicting Rousseau as a Christ-like figure. Coleridge’s subsequent disappointment with Pantisocracy led him to reject Rousseau and the social contract. Comparing Rousseau to Luther in The Friend, Coleridge argues that Rousseau’s unhappiness arises from a conflict between an age of individualism and an ongoing need for community. According to Coleridge, poetry tolerates this conflict better than philosophy. In ‘Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement’ Coleridge suggests that social retreat offers illusory solace from war and social crisis. He critiques the state of nature, sympathy, and even religion for failing to balance the self with its environment. Thematically and formally The Rime of the Ancient Mariner explores this crisis in cohering systems. Through the mariner’s relationship to the albatross, the wedding that frames the poem, and episodes of the supernatural that disrupt the ballad form, Coleridge defines a breaking point between the individual and general wills.


Author(s):  
Duncan Kelly

This chapter binds the book together, recapitulating its general argument, and offering pointers as to how the study relates to some contemporary questions of political theory. It suggests that a classification that distinguishes between Weber the ‘liberal’, Schmitt the ‘conservative’ and Neumann the ‘social democrat’, cannot provide an adequate understanding of this episode in the history of political thought. Nor indeed can it do so for other periods. In this book, one part of the development of their ideas has focused on the relationship between state and politics. By learning from their examples, people continue their own search for an acceptable balance between the freedom of the individual and the claims of the political community.


Author(s):  
Robert A. Schultz

As we saw from the last two chapters, the ethical IT professional is embedded in contexts of management, organization, and society. Ethical behavior for the IT professional is, therefore, impacted by the ethics of people and institutions in his or her environment. The primary term for ethical institutions is justice.1 In the next three chapters, we will examine the justice of institutions impacting the IT professional. The framework used will be that provided by the works of John Rawls (1999, 2001). Rawls’ work is based on the idea of a social contract, that a justly ordered society is one to which individuals can freely decide to obligate themselves. But our decision will very likely be biased if we base it on our current situation. So Rawls’ major addition is to say that the decision must be made prior to being in society, without knowledge of what our position will be in society, and it will be a decision we will be obligated to stick to and expect others to make and stick to as well. The basic principles for society chosen in this position (which Rawls calls the original position) will be the Principles of Justice. According to Rawls (1999, 2001), there will be two: 1. The First Principle of Justice or Greatest Equal Liberty: Society is to be arranged so that all members have the greatest equal liberty possible for all, including fair equality of opportunity. Each individual has basic liberties which are not to be compromised or traded off for other benefits. Besides the basic freedoms such as freedom of speech, assembly, religion, and so on, it includes equality of opportunity. Thus society’s rules are not biased against anyone in it and allow all to pursue their interests and realize their abilities. 2. The Second Principle of Justice or the Difference Principle: Economic inequalities in society are justified insofar as they make members of the least advantaged social class, better off than if there were no inequality. The social contract basis for this principle is straightforward: If you are entering a society with no knowledge of your specific place in that society, the Difference Principle guarantees that you will be no worse off than you need to be to keep the society functioning.


2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (7) ◽  
pp. 1175-1219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Néstor Castañeda ◽  
David Doyle ◽  
Cassilde Schwartz

We examine the individual-level determinants of tax morale in low-capacity states, specifically Latin American countries, where the social contract is often perceived as fractured. We argue that individuals in such states perceive the social contract as an agreement to which they can opt in or opt out. Those who choose to opt out prefer to substitute state-provided goods for private providers, rather than pay for public goods through taxes or free ride to receive those goods. Through a list experiment conducted in Mexico City, we demonstrate that willingness to evade taxes is highest when individuals have stepped outside of the social contract. More traditional indicators of reciprocity—such as socioeconomic status and perceptions of corruption—are not significant. We bolster our experimental results with observational data from 17 Latin American cities; those with access to employer-sponsored insurance are more willing to evade tax.


2021 ◽  
pp. 104-117
Author(s):  
EKATERINA S. ELBAKYAN ◽  

The article examines the metamorphoses that occurred in the religious practices of various denominations during the pandemic. Through the strengthening, thanks to the pandemic, the dynamics of the social functions of religion (integrative, communicative, normative-regulatory, legitimizing), the author examines the changes in the structure of modern religiosity, highlighting and characterizing three main types: institutional, individual and individual-institutional religiosity. The author pays special attention to the individual-institutional type of religiosity, believing that the carriers of this particular type of religiosity experienced the least psychological problems in connection with the closure of churches, mosques, prayer houses. Analyzing the social functions of religion, and, in particular, the communicative function, the author examines in detail the process of virtualization of religion, which has significantly intensified in the last year and a half (“cyberreligion”, “online religion”), indicates a close relationship between the individual-institutional type of religiosity and the dynamics of communicative the functions of religion, reflected, in particular, in the strengthening of the virtualization of religion. The author sees the key tendency in the change in the structure of religiosity in the change in the ratio between its three main types towards the percentage increase in the carriers of individual-institutional religiosity.


Author(s):  
A.A. Petrusevich

The article is devoted to the study of students’ socially significant values. The obtained results of the study substantiate the close relationship between the social position of the individual and his value orientations. The paper presents detailed characteristics of various groups of pedagogical university students with different socially active positions, reflected in its valuesemantic characteristics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-164
Author(s):  
Loredana VLAD ◽  

People are considered bio-psycho-social beings. From the beginning of mankind, violence as part of human nature has manifested itself in relation to the other through the crime committed by Cain against his brother Abel. As time passed, it was found that a form of protection is needed to prolong the life of the individual, and thus by accepting the "social contract", man gave up his natural state in which freedom was absolute, in order to obey the law. In this paper I will bring to the fore a series of considerations with a focus on violence, emphasizing the idea of the vice of consent.


Author(s):  
David Everatt

Social contracts are concerned with the legitimacy of the state over the individual. The social contract offers mutual benefit and reciprocal obligation and is intrinsic to liberalism’s assertion that freedom is normative and encroaching on freedom requires justification. The social contract is both a philosophical idea and a toolkit for defusing conflict and tying participants to core liberal values. Talk of new social contracts, including intergenerational contracts, focus on maintaining a peaceful status quo, not transcending it. For the Global South in general, and youth in particular, the experience is more contract and less social. There seems little opportunity for southern youth to move from the margins to center stage, mimicking the inability of the Global South to do the same. Southern youth bear the brunt of limited economic opportunities, precarious employment, inequality, racism, and violence, compounding their marginalized place in society. What value can social contracting play beyond a short-term band-aid, unless it incorporates a fundamental rupture with the past?


Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 349
Author(s):  
Micah Watson

Near the conclusion of The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau starkly proclaims that no state has been founded without a religious basis, and thus if he is right, every political community must grapple with the tension between the conflicting claims of the divine and the mundane. Because Christianity cannot solve this tension, Rousseau calls for a new religion, a civil religion. Whereas most of the academic treatment of civil religion follows various paths beginning with Robert Bellah’s original 1967 article, this essay explores more deeply the contours of Rousseau’s original articulation of the problem to which civil religion is his proposed solution. The essay concludes by suggesting that we can find important elements of Rousseau’s approach still alive and well in American politics and culture today.


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