Descartes And Hobbes

The revolution generated radical changes in the principles, opinions, and sentiments of the global people. New ideas and issues affected political ideas. In addition a new government was also changed. A few of the many enlightenment thinkers were Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, baron Do Montesquieu, and Jean Jacques Rousseau.

Descartes is now clear on his perception of God so he looks at material things. He points out that a body must exist in reality, because for him to dream about his body, it must exist before he would know what to dream about. So although he can perceive qualities of material things, he is still confused about some things because of is imperfect perception. He concludes that the senses are meant to help him get around in the world, not to lead him to the truth. ( SparkNotes Editors, 2012 )

During the sixteen hundreds, the French philosopher René Descartes laid the foundations for the beginnings of Cartesian Dualism. In contrast, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued against dualism in favor of materialism. Recently, Cartesian Dualism, and dualism in general has fallen out of favor as materialism arose as a more plausible and explanatory theory regarding the interrelationships between body and mind. The translation Descartes’ writing in the Meditations is far more cryptic than Hobbes’ writing in the Leviathan. Making it far easier to see Hobbes’ claims. Hobbes provides a reasonable explanation against dualism in his objections to Descartes, and in his Leviathan, provides background upon his reasoning in

To know anything about the external world on the basis or your sensory experiences, you have to know that you are not dreaming.

The story “lord of the flies’’ by William Golding, the novel correlates to the philosophical views of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. John Locke was an English philosopher that surmised man's natural moral compass would point towards good, Locke's philosophical writings stated “ that individuals in a state of nature would have stronger moral limits on their actions. Essentially, Locke thought that our human nature was characterized by reason and tolerance. People, Locke believed, were basically good’’ ( Locke and Hobbes Overview 2). John Locke thought if people were given no rules they would make a paradise, flourishing in law, order, and structure, Thomas Hobbes believed people were naturally cruel and chaotic, with a need of a strong ruler to make decisions. Hobbes stated, “Who felt that mankind was inherently evil and required a strong central authority to ward off this inclination toward an immoral behavior, Locke believed that human nature allowed men to be selfish’’( Locke and Hobbes Overview 2 ). Thomas Hobbes believed a strong iron-fisted ruler was needed for the safety and well being of a society. The ideals of man in a natural state, follow Thomas Hobbes philosophical view represented through Jack's brutish and monarch like attitude which lead to them living in a dystopian society.

Locke and Hobbes started with a central notion that people with similar “state of nature” would on their own accord come together as a state. Locke believed that individual would not perpetually be at war with each other. He believed humans began with a state of natural characteristics of absolute freedom with no government in site. Hobbes work differs from that of Locke’s because he felt people needed a strong central authority to ward off the inherent evil and anarchic state of man. Locke believed that within the state of nature man would have stronger morals and thus limit their actions. Locke also, credited people with the ability to do the right thing within a group. And the natural rights and civil society where Hobbes differentiated with this by believing that people had to resolve their natural rights and the their were privileges granted by the sovereign. Locke believed the relationship between citizens and government took the form of a social contract, in which in exchange for order and protections provided by institutions the citizens agree to surrender some of the freedoms within the state of nature. This was also, agreed that power of the state was not absolute but exercised according to law. If broken by the state it forfeits and the contract becomes void. This allots for the citizens of the state to have a “voice” and power for change to replace the government with moral obligation by the governed. Hobbes believed absolute power was the price man should

To begin, Hobbes uses his most recognized work called the Leviathan to discuss several issues relating from the natural state of humans to more complex arguments about the equality of human beings. When observing Hobbes it best to start by examining his definition of appetites and aversions. For Hobbes appetites and aversions are outlined to be, “This endeavor, when it is

Descartes starts his distinction of mind and by writing of his senses, that he has

Some have suggested that René Descartes argues that sense perception relies on the mind rather than on the body. Descartes asserts that we can know our mind more readily than we can know our body. In support of this idea he gives the example of a piece of wax which is observed in its solid form and its liquid form. After pointing out the difficulties of relying on the senses of the physical body to understand the nature of the wax he makes this claim: [P]erception ... is neither a seeing, nor a touching, nor an imagining. ... [R]ather it is an inspection on the part of the mind alone (Section 31). 1 This quote is perhaps the most direct statement of the author's thesis on this subject.

He finds it plausible that we are all living in a dream and we have never experienced reality. He can no longer give any credence to his senses and finds himself in a place of complete uncertainty. Descartes comes to the conclusion that nothing can be perceived more easily and more evidently than his own mind. He has discovered that even bodies are not accurately perceived by the senses or the faculty of imagination, and are only accurately being perceived by the intellect. He also realizes that they are not distinguished through being touched, smelled, or tasted, but by being understood alone. (An apple is an apple because our mind tells us that it is an apple.) It is the faculty of reason that gives the knowledge and lets the mind know the truths and essences of objects. Descartes assumes that all of us can be decided by our senses, someone can see something far away, and then discover that is not what we thought it was. Or even a oar when is immerse half in water attempt to be bent, but instead is straight. Descartes think that we cannot always be sure of what we sense, and gives the example of himself seated by the fire.

This perspective is essentially materialist and rather careful interpretation of the human conditions is radical and far-reaching in the history of political though and particularly disagrees with Locke’s. Unlike Locke’s perspective therefore, self-interest is the dominant theme of Hobbes’ perspective of the state of nature (Hobbes, 1994).

Secondly, when we ask the question, what is freedom, we are not simply asking for a definition. We are seeking to find some truth in regards to liberty. We don’t ask this difficult question in order to get some sort of dictionary definition, we ask this question in order to gain insight. We ask this question to know how we should live our lives and how our government and other institutions should act in respect to liberty and our freedoms. Berlin’s two conceptions not only provide us with a definition, but also helps us determine how our society and laws should progress.

In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes strives first and foremost to provide an infallibly justified foundation for the empirical sciences, and second to prove the existence of God. I will focus on the first and second meditations in my attempt to show that, in his skepticism of the sources of knowledge, he fails to follow the rules he has set out in the Discourse on Method. First I claim that Descartes fails to draw the distinction between pure sensation and inference, which make up what he calls sensation, and then consider the consequences of this failure to follow his method. Second, I will show that in his treatment of thinking Descartes fails to distinguish between active and passive thinking.

Before these changes were apparent, Descartes pointed out the difficulties of relying on the senses, of the physical body. In section 31 of Meditation two, he says that the perception he has, "is a case not of vision or touch or imagination - nor has it ever been, despite previous appearances - but of purely mental scrutiny". Descartes shows that our senses cannot be used to have knowledge of things in the external world, and that knowledge of these things must come through the mind alone.

Firstly, Descartes deals with the issue of empiricism- the theory that our knowledge is derived from our sensory experiences. Since we know from everyday errors that our senses have the ability to deceive us fairly often so making our perceptions to be something that it is not. For example, there are lots of examples of optical illusions and the fact that the train tracks may appear to converge from a distance. Consequently, we ought to