Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Compare and Contrast Locke to Hobbes

Compare and Contrast Locke to Hobbes Free Online Research Papers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke were two of the greatest political and philosophical thinkers of their time and ours. Ideas like these have shaped governments throughout history and still hold true today. They had extremely different views on government, but the bases of their arguments were similar. They used reason to justify their ideas, rather than divine right. Although both men acknowledged that there was a God, He played a very small part in their ideologies. The philosophers each had an impact on the world. John Locke’s ideas influenced the United States Declaration of Independence, Federalist papers, and the Constitution. Thomas Hobbes’s ideas refuted England’s parliament. Hobbes and Locke agreed that some type of ruler would be necessary, whether it be an absolute monarchy or a form of democracy. Although Locke and Hobbes agreed on some subjects, the majority of their philosophies differed greatly, such as the type of ruler that they agreed was needed. Thomas Hobbes believed that a ruler with absolute control was necessary, while John Locke held that government should be at least partly be influenced by the people. Locke also believed that the people had the right and responsibility to overthrow their government if their needs are not being satisfied. On the contrary, Hobbes was more pessimistic. He believed in the Social Contract, thinking that once people handed their will to a ruler by putting them in power, that ruler had total power over them and could not be overthrown. Hobbes believed that this transfer of power was how man is able to get out of the state of nature and formed society. John Locke also believed in the social contract and the state of nature, but he opposed Hobbes’s position on these issues. Locke thought people could live in peace in the state of nature, because everyone was equal and had a conscience to guide them. Locke disagreed with Hobbes’s assumption that the state of war and the state of nature were the same. He felt that people could go without a leader by using reason in its place. The state of war would only occur when they tried to force things on each other. Locke thought that when that happened people had the right to wage war, as an act of defense. I feel that the reason the philosophies of Locke and Hobbes clashed is that their views of man kind were polar opposites. John Locke kept an optimistic view point, considering man kind good, independent, and equal from birth, and the choices made from then on to be able to change this image. He also felt that humans could only understand and sympathize with things that they had experienced, but also could learn from mistakes and interactions to improve themselves. Thomas Hobbes’s view point was very different. He reasoned that humans were not unlike animals, and were fearful and predatory. Hobbes held that man kind was evil and constantly in opposition to the rest of mankind. He also felt that humans had an innate motivation to feel pleasure and cause hurt. Research Papers on Compare and Contrast Locke to HobbesAssess the importance of Nationalism 1815-1850 EuropeQuebec and CanadaBringing Democracy to AfricaCanaanite Influence on the Early Israelite ReligionComparison: Letter from Birmingham and CritoEffects of Television Violence on ChildrenCapital PunishmentThe Effects of Illegal ImmigrationUnreasonable Searches and Seizures19 Century Society: A Deeply Divided Era

Sunday, March 1, 2020

Stay on the Map with New Geopolitical Names

Stay on the Map with New Geopolitical Names Stay on the Map with New Geopolitical Names Stay on the Map with New Geopolitical Names By Mark Nichol I recently took a trip that encompassed layovers in Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. And if you believe that, I’ve got a great deal for you on a bridge in Londinium. The truth is, none of the places I just mentioned exist not by that name, anyway, or not as political entities. Great Britain is the name of the island that constitutes most of what is properly known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, usually abbreviated to â€Å"the United Kingdom.† That nation consists of four other nations: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland (as well as many but not all of the small islands in the vicinity). If you refer to England, you should mean England no more, and no less. And though the citizens of England are the English, those of the United Kingdom are not; they’re British. (I’ll leave further details to the denizens of that fair country.) Czechoslovakia, with gratitude from our twisted tongues and fumbling fingers, divided itself peacefully into the Czech Republic and Slovakia nearly twenty years ago, soon after the collapse of its Communist government. (The residents generally speak related but different languages, the geography of the two countries is distinct, and their religious habits and other cultural characteristics differ significantly.) Yugoslavia, an unfortunate agglomeration of Balkan nations that held together against all odds for much of the twentieth century, collapsed in acrimony at around the same time. The two remaining constituent states out of eight states and provinces briefly held on to the name but were soon known as the nation of Serbia and Montenegro; however, they separated in 2006. The former Soviet Union gave way in the 1990s to fifteen separate nations, including Russia (also known as the Russian Federation), requiring journalists to sometimes make a distinction between the nation of Georgia and the American state by that name, and releasing a bewildering array of multisyllabic monikers, many of them ending in -stan (Persian for â€Å"home of† or â€Å"place of†). Have you ever been to Bombay? It’s now formally known as Mumbai, a more accurate pronunciation of the native appellation. Rangoon, in Burma (oops I mean, Myanmar), is for the same reason now identified as Yangon. Farther north, Greenland is now Kalaallit Nunaat (the indigenous name), and Canada broke off a portion of the Northwest Territories to form Nunavut. What future changes can we expect? Belgium, for many years an uneasy union of the French-identified culture of the region of Wallonia (French: Wallonie) and the Dutch-identified culture of the area long known as Flanders (Dutch: Vlaanderen), is likely to cleave into those two entities. Many other new names may appear on maps in the near future based on nomenclature arising from shifting geopolitics. The ephemeral nature of geographical names makes the idea of printed atlases and such seem faintly ridiculous, because such publications are to some extent obsolete as soon as they’re produced. But don’t let that keep you from consulting with an authoritative resource before you refer in writing to a foreign locale. Your best bet, however, is an online source. Equally important, when you mention a place in a historical context, do use the appropriate name for example, â€Å"Great Britain† in a Revolutionary War novel, â€Å"Czechoslovakia† in an essay about the Prague Spring, or â€Å"Yugoslavia† in an article about that country’s charismatic dictator, Tito. In addition, phrases such as â€Å"in the former Soviet Union† or â€Å"part of what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire† help keep countries in their place. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:7 Classes and Types of Phrases15 Words for Household Rooms, and Their Synonyms40 Idioms with First