ETHC445 Week 3 Discussion Latest 2019 November

ETHC445 Principles of Ethics

Week 3 Discussion

Living in
Our State of Nature

Textbook:
Chapter 6, 10, 12 (section: “The Modern Period”)

Lesson

Minimum of
1 scholarly source

Introduction

Social
contract theorists say that morality consists of a set of rules governing how
people should treat one another that rational beings will agree to accept for
their mutual benefit, on the condition that others agree to follow these rules
as well.

Hobbes runs
the logic like this in the form of a logical syllogism:

We are all
self-interested.

Each of us
needs to have a peaceful and cooperative social order to pursue our interests.

We need
moral rules in order to establish and maintain a cooperative social order.

Therefore,
self-interest motivates us to establish moral rules.

Hobbes
looked to the past to observe a primitive “State of Nature” in which there is
no such thing as morality, and that this self-interested human nature was
“nasty, brutish, and short” – a kind of perpetual state of warfare.

Locke
disagreed, and set forth the view that the state exists to preserve the natural
rights of its citizens. When governments fail in that task, citizens have the
right – and sometimes the duty – to withdraw their support and even to rebel.
Locke addressed Hobbes’s claim that the state of nature was the state of war,
though he attribute this claim to “some men” not to Hobbes. He
refuted it by pointing to existing and real historical examples of people in a
state of nature. For this purpose he regarded any people who are not subject to
a common judge to resolve disputes, people who may legitimately take action
themselves to punish wrong doers, as in a state of nature.

Initial
Post Instructions

For the
initial post, address the following:

Which
philosophy do you espouse?

How much
authority should be granted to governments (e.g., the right to kill (death
penalty/capital punishment/use of deadly force)? How much would you give up in
return for safety?

If you side
with Hobbes, do you support at any point recourse if the government violates
its own contract (if so, you probably have a bit of Locke in your thinking)?

Follow-Up
Post Instructions

Respond to
at least two peers or one peer and the instructor. Further the dialogue by
providing more information and clarification.