Is Government a Socail Contract
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- Category: Politics: Political Science
- Date Submitted: 12/12/2012 10:25 AM
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PSC100
09-28-2010
Essay #2
Is Government a Social Contract?
Throughout the past decades of the human race, philosophers who have came before, have provided us with great factual opinions and views that satisfy the question, why government? Thomas Hobbes a great philosopher believes government was created by man to protect the individual from the “state of nature”. State of nature was created and defined by Thomas Hobbes as the three things mankind will posses if government didn’t exist. These three things are perfect equality, perfect rights, and perfect freedom. Perfect equality meaning every man is equal in an unusual sense in comparison to the common preconceived notions of equality. Basically it means, man is equal in relation to their ability to take each other’s life. Hobbes describes perfect rights as our natural rights we are born with and perfect freedom is self explanatory, we are all born free. In relations to Hobbes’s state of nature, how is government put into place? Is government the result of a type of social contract in which we have agreed to relinquish some of our rights to form a state and leave the state of nature? No, government is not the result of a type of social contract, in which we have agreed to relinquish some our rights to form a state and leave the state of nature because government is not an option, it is mandatory and we couldn’t cease governmental control even if desired. Lord of the Flies, a 1963 film that depicts a group of kids who are stranded on an island, illustrates this and will be used in comparison.
Firstly, governments have been in effect for almost as long as there has been an existence of mankind. Government is not an option, it is mandatory. We the people are born under governmental control and therefore have grown accustom to living a lifestyle in which there is always a higher power to tell us what we can and cannot do. As a result government is like second nature because even if we lived in a state of...
09-28-2010
Essay #2
Is Government a Social Contract?
Throughout the past decades of the human race, philosophers who have came before, have provided us with great factual opinions and views that satisfy the question, why government? Thomas Hobbes a great philosopher believes government was created by man to protect the individual from the “state of nature”. State of nature was created and defined by Thomas Hobbes as the three things mankind will posses if government didn’t exist. These three things are perfect equality, perfect rights, and perfect freedom. Perfect equality meaning every man is equal in an unusual sense in comparison to the common preconceived notions of equality. Basically it means, man is equal in relation to their ability to take each other’s life. Hobbes describes perfect rights as our natural rights we are born with and perfect freedom is self explanatory, we are all born free. In relations to Hobbes’s state of nature, how is government put into place? Is government the result of a type of social contract in which we have agreed to relinquish some of our rights to form a state and leave the state of nature? No, government is not the result of a type of social contract, in which we have agreed to relinquish some our rights to form a state and leave the state of nature because government is not an option, it is mandatory and we couldn’t cease governmental control even if desired. Lord of the Flies, a 1963 film that depicts a group of kids who are stranded on an island, illustrates this and will be used in comparison.
Firstly, governments have been in effect for almost as long as there has been an existence of mankind. Government is not an option, it is mandatory. We the people are born under governmental control and therefore have grown accustom to living a lifestyle in which there is always a higher power to tell us what we can and cannot do. As a result government is like second nature because even if we lived in a state of...