msf20011023

For Tuesday, October 23

Read, in The Democratic Idea,

#9: The Social Contract by Thomas Hobbes

pp. 39-49

#15: A Model of Christian Charity by John Winthrop

pp. 65 - 66

We'll take a few minutes at the beginning of class to clear up any lingering concerns about Areopagitica. Thank you for your diligent work on this essay. I appreciate your scholarship.

We've seen how important the idea of reason was to Milton. It was no less important to other thinkers of his generation--important and useful. The elevated appreciation for men and women to better their lives through thought led to concerted efforts to apply this approach to many different concerns. One of the chief of these was the nature of society itself. We all know that at a certain age a child's favorite word is why? Nothing is left for granted, and everything must be explained. Thinkers at the beginning of the modern age behaved similarly. One of the basic social questions has to be "Why have society at all?" "Why do we live in social groups, rather than as isolated individuals?" Both Thomas Hobbes and John Winthrop seek to answer these questions.

Of the two, Hobbes is the longest and more difficult--not as difficult as Milton, however, once you get past the use of the "th" form of words... ariseth instead of arises, for example. Hobbes is investigating the kinds of conditions which lead to human happiness (felicity) and human misery. He believes that the attempt to achieve the former and avoid the latter gives rise to society. He begins by the statement that people are equal in nature. We'll want to explore this and its implications. Note how Hobbes structures his arguments (If you want to know why you are drilled to use theses, primary support and secondary support in expository writing consider that this is largely how Hobbes writes and thinks).

Consider how Hobbes argues that our natural equality tends to make us enemies of each other. Consider, too, how Hobbes defines war and peace. (Timely definitions, here). Finally, understand what Hobbes means by our natural rights. Nature here equates to rights apart from our social lives. Is perpetual war a product of our natural rights? Is life according to nature "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short?"

John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts, begins his discussion at the other pole of the argument. While Hobbes begins with the equality of men, Winthrop begins with the inequality. He observes the inequality and asks why a just God creates social inequality. As God's ordering of things, it must be good in and of itself, and good for us, as well. You'll want to think about his three explanations (reasons) why inequality among people is a "good thing" (left column, p. 65). You'll then want to understand how this leads to a "model" of social behavior and what that model of appropriate social behavior (society) is (right column, p. 65)

For Friday, October 26

Read, in Democratic Idea

from #11, Second Treatise of Government (John Locke)

Sections [222-225] Of the Dissolution of Government

pp. 54 - 55

We may not quite finish Winthrop's Model of Christian Charity on Tuesday. We'll clean up any loose ends and then proceed on to read only part of essay 11 in Democratic Idea. Hobbes and Winthrop give us a pretty good idea of what thinkers in the early modern period though society (and by extension, Government) was for. Locke raises the question, "what am I obliged to do when government fails to fulfill its contract?" To understand the revolutionary impact of his answer to this question we must remember that prior to this point Western political thought associated power with Divine authority. Bishops officiated at coronations, and Kings and Queens ruled by Divine Right as God's representatives on earth.

The two portraits of John Lock (above, right) help us recognize that artists renditions reflect not only the image of the person being recorded, but also the attitude of the artist doing the recording. Click on the image to the right to visit a website with multiple portraits of many famous people (check out the three portrait of Thomas Hobbes for a confirmation of the variety of interpretations one may discover).