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[Machiavelli; the Prince; Ch. 25]
1) Machiavelli determined that man’s free will could not be eliminated, but that neither could the forces that control the uncontrollable – whether called fortune or luck, nature or God – which “determines one half of our actions. ... According to Machiavelli, a prince must therefore not rely on good fortune, but instead study it, and learn it – both good luck and bad – in order to enable proper resistance to the uncontrollable torments of bad luck and avoid future destruction. ...
[Hobbes; Leviathan; Ch. 13]
2) Hobbes was a precursor to many of our best political theorists, and I attribute to his work, an established forum, which paved way for some of the best deliberations of political theory known to man. ... ) In this piece, Hobbes establishes that man is naturally stupid and unimaginable; that life in the state of nature is brutal and disgusting, and that the fear of death is what drove man into society. The state of nature lacks culture, commodities, knowledge, a sense of time, and other wonders of civilized man, Hobbes believed, but worst of all to him, was that man lives continually in fear and could so easily die, that the quality of one’s life in nature could be described as “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.” To Hobbes, the state of nature was bad to the bone, and man himself was a horrendous creature, unworthy of all the entitlements of civilized man, unless he is willing to commit to the commonwealth. ... Like Hobbes, she believed that the recognition of power should be based on reasons, and since the authorities could not provide reasons to justify why inequality between the sexes existed, women should not be forced to obey such authority, especially blindly.
[Rousseau; the Social Contract; I; Ch. 4]
4) Rousseau, arguably one of the greatest minds of his time, argued that ‘natural man’ attains enough reason to realize the benefits of entering into society, and even before doing so, understands that he must receive something in return. Social life, so to say, comes with it’s share of advantages that surpass the qualities of life in the state of nature, and man signs the covenant with knowledge of this – quite contrary to Hobbes’ original theory of ‘natural man’. In this passage, Rousseau speaks out against blind obedience in a sense, stating, “If you take away all freedom of the will, you strip a man’s actions of all moral significance,” which essentially condemns the notion of slavery, and the renouncing of one’s freedom, which he finds impossible. ... Rousseau notes, “The freedom of the savage is no more than independence” (Social Contract; p. ...
Rousseau disbelieves that “it is fear which drives men to quit the state of nature; but he does say that it is man’s weakness which makes him social.
Approximate Word count = 2332
Approximate Pages = 9.3
(250 words per page double spaced)
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