John Locke's Point Of View

To begin, Victor betrays nature with the physical creation of the monster. Upon giving the creature life, Victor becomes horrified of what he had created and essentially left the creature in fear. It is nature’s responsibility to create life, not mankind. Since Victor gives the monster life, he has created something unnatural and he himself even admits his mistake when he states, “I have created a monster.” To make matters worse, Victor had left his creation on its own when the monster had no prior experience in the world and was learning everything from this point on. The monster, at this point, reflected the innocent nature of a child and needed to be taught properly about life. Victor’s

From Aristotle to John Locke to Thomas Jefferson, the ideas of great philosophers influenced the foundations of the United States. When Jefferson began writing the Declaration of Independence, he wanted to make this new country based on the basic fundamentals. He wanted to base the country on what was considered the natural laws. Jefferson had many philosophical minds to ponder when writing the document, such as Aristotle and most importantly John Locke.

John Locke was perhaps one of the most influential political philosophers of the modern period. In the Second Treatise of Government, John Locke discusses the move from a state of nature and perfect freedom to a then governed society in which authority is given to a legislative and executive power. His major ideas included liberalism and capitalism, state of nature, state of war and the desire to protect one’s property.

Victor started to distance himself from his colleagues, friends and family while he became more engaged in his research. He is so deeply involved with his research that he turns his home into a laboratory. The more Victor works on his research, the more selfish he becomes. He even confesses that “a new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me” (pg 48). His own words prove that there was no logical reason for Victor to create his monster besides the glory of creating life.

The founding fathers drew from many philosophers as they were trying to write the United States Constitution. Some philosophiser includes John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and James Harrington. John Locke believed a society where all people were to have independence and equality . Thomas Hobbes believed a society where government should be provided, without a government there wouldn’t be order. Lastly, James Harrington believed of a limited and balanced power government system. Without these theories/concepts the U.S. Constitution wouldn’t be the same as it is today in the modern world.

Victor thought “for this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart”(page). This quote demonstrates that once Victor had concluded his work of creating the monster, he realized that it may have been a huge mistake. He was not satisfied with his creation instead he was filled with terror. In result of his realization, he left the monster to fend for himself and suffer. Victor shows an evil side of himself by abandoning the monster and leaving him to be universally shunned by society. By Victor doing this one evil act, it causes the monster himself to go off and initiate evil acts of his own.

It is easy to draw a correlation between mistreatment and low self-esteem, the removal to solitude provides respite from the antagonisms of society. However, the monster’s negative experiences and shaping of his short life-time as an impressionable child force him into a deplorable journey are in part because of his reflection of his experiences. Although he finds pleasure in the singing birds in his early walk, the hold of society on him from his self-love is overpowering and becomes futile. The monster can not reflect in the beauty of an isolation that reminds him of how utterly alone is or, or reflect on a society that has exiled him completely. The creature calls himself “miserable and abandoned” and “abortion to be spurned at and kicked” [Shelley].

The monster knows his master and knows that Victor wishes he hadn’t created him and this makes the monster feel terrible about himself. He also knows that Victor feels like he played a hand in every person that his creation murders and the Monster learns to use this to his advantage. He does what he know will hurt his master the most, be kills Victor's friends one by one. This twists Victor and sours his very being. It turns him into a completely different person and killing his creation becomes his goal in life. He went from an energetic and curious young scientists to a old, licentious man bent on killing. The monster felt that he was getting back at his master but probably didn’t fully understand what he was doing by killing. He never had anyone teach him how twisted and evil taking a life is and as a result it was relatively easy for him to nullify a human being. Society had shunning him because of his horrific appearance from the first time they saw him and never looked back. He stands at an intimidating eight feet and is crafted of mangled human corpses, not exactly a common looking being. While he might at looked strange or scary, he had the mind of a very young child what needed guidance. Because of Victor’s guilt, he never gave the monster the teaching that it really needed. This feeds into the cycle and really makes the problem that ends up killing several people and twisting Victor into someone no reasonable person would strive to

The monster believed that Victor would accept him, but after he realized that not only did Victor not want to assume his position in the monster’s life, but society also rejected him, it became a transitory thought, and instead became replaced with his bloodthirst towards Victor and his loved ones, which he knew would hurt way worse than just killing him; making him lonely like himself. Both Victor and the monster partook in horrid acts, in which held horrendous actions; the main one being Victor creating the monster in the first place which in result caused the both of them heartbreak, loneliness, and pain. If Victor wouldn’t have created the monster, then his life would not be filled with so much grief and emptiness; Victor is the true monster, although they are both the primal protagonists as much as they are the antagonists because of the display of the emotions they both portray as lamenting humans/monsters, and the power they give to nature in order to destroy one another. Victor used nature to his advantage, although it was wrong; Victor used nature to create and destroy the monster; he used the

John Locke linked human behavior with our nature. He argued in his works that men are governed and guided by the rules within our nature. “The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.” (2nd Treatise.6) Even without any manmade laws that specifically guide us what and how to do a certain thing, we are programmed to follow basic rules mutually understood by every human on Earth. Locke brought up that these rules discourage, in fundamental, people from gaining power by depriving that of others. He noticed, by specifically employing the word mankind, that the ability to accept and live by this rudimentary rule is the ultimate characteristic that makes us who we are. It is the ability to respect other’s

This rejection by society and the creatures response to it forms him into a monster. This is apparent when he tries to communicate with a family of cottagers. He is attacked by one of the cottagers, who acts out of the fear that the creature’s wretched appearance inspires. This invokes wrath in the creature, and he swears revenge against humanity, particularly his creator. He does this because he is lonely, and no one will accept him as a result of his appearance. This leads the creature to murder just about all of Victor’s family, his closest friend, and eventually drives Victor to his death. This merciless onslaught forms the creature into a monster, acting solely out of unrestrained anger, and his desire for revenge. This is particularly monstrous because all of the violence he causes can be traced back to his appearance, something that he could have dealt with in a more reasonable manner. One might argue he was ignorant of his appearance, but this is not the case. The creature himself recognized his fear inspiring image, proclaiming “I had sagacity enough to discover that the unnatural hideousness of my person was the chief object of horror with those who had formerly beheld me.”(121) The creature’s recognition of this fact along with his intelligence would have allowed it to find a reasonable approach, such as a disguise. This truly shows that the creature chose the monstrous path in dealing with its predicament.

When considering knowledge, Locke is interested in the ability for us to know something, the capacity of gathering and using information and understanding the limits of what we know. He believes this also leads him to realise what we perhaps, cannot know. [1] He wants to find out about the origin of our ideas. His main stand-point is that we don’t have innate ideas and he aims to get rid of the sceptical doubt about what we know. The innate ideas which Locke sets out to argue against are those which “the soul receives in its very first being, and brings into the world with it”. [2] “Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters”. [3] This quote depicts the idea of the “Tabula Rasa”, that at birth are minds

Self: What is the point in which it is okay for people to overthrow the government?

Throughout history, there have been many political philosophers whom influenced the government seen in history books and in modern-day society. Despite the varying ideas about government by each political theorist, aspects of each individual idea can be seen in several political documents such as the United States Declaration of Independence. One of these political theorists being Thomas Hobbes, who believed that people would benefit greatly from a Monarch. While John Locke, another renowned political theorist believed that, though the government could help the people, but did not need absolute control over every aspect of their lives. Though, both theorists had different ideology on the structure of the government the ideas would later go on to influence several political documents including the United States Declaration of Independence.

It was the Founding Fathers’ view of power that led them to declare their independence from Britain. When the French and Indian War ended, Britain gained a large amount of territory which costed a large sum of money to defend from trespassers. Consequently, Parliament started to tax the colonists without their consent. This unbalance of power caused tensions between Britain and the original 13 colonies. Therefore, the Founding Fathers decided that power should be distributed equally amongst the people and that government should be limited. These views were only strengthened when John Locke wrote “The Second Treatise of Civil Government”, which discussed natural rights, consent of the governed, and limited government. Many of the ideas of John Locke were widely accepted and used by the Founding Fathers, specifically Thomas Jefferson. In the Declaration of independence, Jefferson altered Locke’s phrase “life, liberty, and property” into “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. These three ideas of Locke exist to this day in American political culture. Liberty is at the core of American values, some individuals quote Patrick Henry who said, “Give me liberty, or give me death” in the Revolutionary War. This famous statement of the Revolutionary War reflects that if there is no freedom (liberty) to choose or express oneself, then there is no purpose to living a life where one is not in control of their destiny. The second ideal, consent of the governed, describes how