Philosophers in Pictures

8/4/2019 Philosophers in Pictures

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ARISTOTLE

“The State Exists by Nature”

In order to understand anything, you must look at the smallest parts.

Its natural that things which are incomplete should seek the things that complete them.

For example: 1. Male & Female2. Natural Rulers and the Ruled (Master/Slave) both need each other

Female and Slave are different

Non-Greeks don’t recognize this, which is why they should be ruled by Greeks.

Households are made up of the two associations: Man and Woman, Man and Labor (Slave or Ox). Households meet day-to-day needs.

When several households get together to meet needs other than day-to-day, a village isformed.

The village is a higher degree of a household. Just as men make the rules in their houses,

somebody rules the village.

The final step is that villages get together to form the state (a government) so that all

needs can be met. It happens to get needs met, but it stays because it is good. It is wholeand complete in this form.

The state exists by nature and man is by nature fit for state.

Men without state are wretched, lonely, and keen to go to war.

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THOMAS HOBBES

“The Misery of the Natural Condition of Mankind”

Men are equal. In body, the weakest can kill the strongest (by secret planning or working

with others)In the mind, they are even more equal. You can gain good judgment through

experiencing things, which everyone gains equally. Although any person may admit thatothers are smarter, funnier, or better speakers, few people think there are many so wise asthem. You KNOW what you know.

If everybody is equal, if two men want the same thing that they can’t both have, they willfight for it, becoming enemies. If you’ve got something in demand, you can count on

somebody coming to take it. You can’t defend yourself against this except to dominate

enough people that you are strong enough to be safe.

Men fight for 1. Gain (what they want) 2. Safety (to protect what they have) and 3.

Glory (to protect their name/reputation).

Without law, men live in a state of war. Not a war of battles, but a war like a stretch of

bad weather that goes on and on with no end in sight.

In the state of nature/war, there would be no security, no inventions, no culture, no

knowledge or learning, no sense of time, and continual fear. “The life of man, solitary,

poor, nasty, brutish and short”.

Proof: you lock your doors even though you HAVE laws and Government. This state of

perpetual fear exists often in kings, but they keep their countries safe, so their people donot feel it.

Nothing is wrong until there is a law against it. In the state of war, every action is

justified. Every man for every man, get what you can get and keep it for as long as youcan.

Men are inclined to make peace to avoid fear and death, they want to live easily and tokeep what they work for. These things make them work together to make peace and

eventually, a government.

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John Locke

“The State of Nature and the State of War”

To understand political power and governments, we need to understand the natural state

of men, a state where they are perfectly free, within the law of Nature.

In a state of nature, also needs to be a state of equality. But a state of nature it not a state

of ‘do-whatever-you-want’. You can’t harm another person’s life, health, liberty or possessions. (we are all God’s property – don’t mess with God’s stuff!) The only reason

you could do that would be to do justice and punish somebody.

Everybody has a right to punish people who break the laws of nature, but you can’t punish with vengeance, you may only punish as fits the crime. You should punish to 1.

Fix it and 2. Prevent it. Offenders don’t live by God’s rules and that makes them

dangerous. Every man needs to protect the species, teach the offender a lesson and prevent it from happening again.

Proof that laws of nature exist: Foreigners in a country can be punished for breaking thelaws even though they have no allegiance to that country. There must be natural rules,

even without government.

Everybody can punish an offender, but only the injured can say what will fix/forgive. To prevent crime, you gotta do what you can. There IS justification in putting murderers to

death, they are like man animals that must be put down.

In punishing, it is too easy for men to go easy on their friends and harder on their enemies

and that is why we need government, to balance that out. Of course, governments are

made up of individuals who have the same flaws.

The state of nature is a state of Peace and Equality, it is only when one group breaks the

laws of nature that there needs be any war.

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Baron de Montesquieu

“Fear and Peace”

Man is a physical being, governed by physical laws. (like gravity!) Because man is so

intelligent, he frequently breaks these laws of God. He is smart and passionate and busy

and he forgets God. Religion is created to remind him of his duty. He also might forgethis fellow man, and this is why governments and laws, to remind him of his moral duty to

other humans.

To understand man’s laws, we must understand man before society existed.

Man wouldn’t know anything other than himself. He would think only of his own

preservation and would feel only his own weakness. FIRST: He would be afraid,trembling at the motion of a leaf and flying from shadows.

Men wouldn’t be in danger of wars, they would be too afraid of each other to attack oneanother. Hobbes is wrong about this. He is looking at today’s man and then tracing that

backwards. Its not correct.

SECOND: Next to his weakness, man would start to feel what he wants, namely, hewants nourishment.

Although he would be afraid of other people, he would eventually figure out that other people were afraid too, so they would agree to work together.

THIRD: He would start to feel the attraction of man and woman.

Because he is not an animal, because he can learn and can cooperate, men can unite with

one another and FOURTH: he desires to live in a society.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“The Noble Savage”Other philosophers have tried to describe the state of nature but they haven’t done it right.They are looking at today’s men, not truly ‘savage’ men.

Animals in the wild are much stronger than animals raised in captivity. This is also true

for men, especially so because men indulge themselves.

Primitive men don’t worry that they have no clothing. They get along just fine with the

basics. It makes no sense for men to invent things that they have survived without their whole lives. Besides, you can only work for things that you either can imagine or things

you desire by instinct.

Since savage men aren’t really smart, they can’t imagine things and can’t invent things.

He only wants 1. Food, 2. Female, and 3. Sleep. He only fears pain and hunger (he

cannot imagine death).

Men would have no reason to associate with other men, so you couldn’t really say

whether men as a whole would be good OR bad, you could only look at individuals

actions as good/bad on whether or not those are helpful or hurtful.

For certain you can’t agree with Hobbes and say that he is bad because he doesn’t know

good. Hobbes sees all the problems of modern men. Savages aren’t bad because theydon’t know good… and its not the knowledge of that or laws that keep them from being

bad. They don’t know the difference!

Animals have compassion for one another, and don’t like to see each other suffer. The

same is true for man. Men would be just like animals, without speech who could not

learn or advance as a species, but would just survive.

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Robert Owen

“Man’s Character Is Formed for Him”

We’ve long believed that man was totally accountable for his own actions, but that is a

BIG mistake! “It generates and perpetuates ignorance, hatred and revenge, where,without such error, only intelligence, confidence and kindness would exist.” If we didn’t

set up society around this idea, it would be so much better!

Your character is formed for you. Your parents gave you the beliefs, ideas, habits which

you base your actions upon and YOU CAN’T CHANGE THAT!!

Society has always been set up on the FLAWED principles that: 1. Man makes his owncharacter, 2. he can choose who/what he likes and 3. that some must be in poverty so that

other can be happy. But this only causes ignorance, poverty and vice.

Facts Prove: 1. Your character is formed for you. 2. You can teach/mold a man 3. You

CANT choose who/what you like 4. People can be trained to make more than they use. 5.

The state can make sure that all are happy. 6. Any community can be formed so that anyindividual is happier than they are under the present circumstances. 7. Society now is

based on flawed principles. 8. We can get rid of the old system and institute a new system

without hurting anybody.

We teach people crime, then punish them for being criminals. But if the judges we have

now had been brought up poor and criminal, would they still grow up to be judges? Or

would they excel in crime they way they have excelled in the law? If circumstances weretotally reversed, would the criminals sentence the judges? Clearly, the circumstances are

more important than the individuals.

I don’t like punishment, it causes people to abuse their authority. In order to change

behavior, I created the 4-color system to reflect their conduct. Over time their behavior

changed because of the conditions that I created. IT IS POSSIBLE.

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Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

“Man as a Productive Being”

We begin by speaking from REAL experience, not from theory or idea.

Human history his about the existence of humans and how they have changed, not the physical conditions under which they live.

Men are different from animals because they PRODUCE their means of subsistence, theyare in essence, producing their own lives. The way they make things depends on what is

available but it is also an EXPRESSION of their lives. “As individuals express their life,

so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what

they produce and with how they produce.” – You are what you MAKE/DO.

When you are actively producing, you enter into social/political relations. The state isconstantly changing as individuals relations with each other change.

This way of thinking is real, from real men, not from imagination but in their development, their history. Speculation/imagination ends in real life. You can talk and

philosophize all you want, but reality IS and you can only describe it. Our “Philosophy”

must try to describe it and categorize what has happened. It is hard to do!

Language exists and is born from the need to communicate with and relate to other

people. The animal does not “relate” to anything.

Consciousness is a social product: You are at first conscious of your immediate

surroundings. You are conscious of nature, which you cannot change and which affects

your being and determines your relationships with other people. You then becomeconscious of working with those around you and that is the beginning of society.

Consciousness/thinking/reasoning takes the place of instinct.

Man develops further as he increases productivity and increases population. With thisthere develops a division of labor that happens spontaneously because some are stronger

than others or better at some things.

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