Machiavelli and Hobbes understood the natural state of the world to be conflict. How does this shape their understanding of human beings, politics, ethics, and morality? Does this idea and itself towards liberal or conservative ideas? Explain. Machiavelli’s understanding of the natural state of the world to be conflict causes him to look and access the world differently than others. His understanding of the natural state of the world bleeds over into his understanding of human beings, politics, ethics, and morality.
His belief of human beings is that they are simple-minded fickle creatures, whose attention span is almost non-existent. He also believes that politics and ethics and morality cannot coexist. A politician cannot be a very ethical or moral person and a highly ethical or moral person will not make a good politician, because cruelty is something that can ever be made to look ethical or moral. Machiavelli separates ethics and morality from politics, he is one of the first philosophers to do so.
Many of his instructions go against moral decisions. His advocating of the use of cruelty as the best means to gain power, no matter how true it may have been, is unethical and immoral. His writing displays politics to be amoral, and not one for a person who is unwilling to trade their eternal happiness for historical immorality. His extensive advocating of destruction and cruelty leaves no room for any form of morality or ethics. In his book he gives numerous different ways to take over a republic or a monarchy.
The Essay on Morality And Ethics On Teachers
MORALITY AND ETHICS ON TEACHERS I. INTRODUCTION Teachers are endowed with great power over students, and that power comes with great responsibility. Teachers are responsible in constructing courses and classroom environments that encourage learning, evaluating fairly and treating students respectfully. We, as teachers, are expected to avoid actions or inactions that may cause students educational ...
And he often believes the best to gain power over a territory is through cruel acts. For example he explains, that the easiest way to take over a republic is by demolishing the city, because the ones that survive will be too afraid and intimated to revolt against the new ruler, and to take over a kingdom it is key to kill off all the royal family in order to keep complete control over the kingdom, and squash any hopes of the old family coming back to power. Morality and politics cannot coexist, according to Machiavelli.
In order to be a successful ruler you need to be willing to give up your life of eternity after your death, in order to prosper in your present life. In order to prosper in politics you must be amoral, and in order to prosper in your moral and ethical life you must live a true and just life. And this is virtually impossible to do while you are wrapped up in politics. You cannot be a successful politician while still trying to be a moral person. His argument and advocating for the necessity of cruelty and crime, in order to establish your power, is a big problem and ignores all notions of right and wrong.
Especially since he doesn’t advise gradual cruelty spread over a period of time, instead he says to use extreme cruelty for a short period of time, but be careful of it not being too long, so that the people can forget how cruel you were once were. He makes it poignant that there is a necessity of cruelty and crime in order to establish power. “People should either be caressed or crushed, (Hobbes, P. 9).
” You either treat them well and get in their good graces that they support you in your endeavors or you kill them, and threaten them, and make them fear you so that they are too scared to try and create an uprising.
Machiavelli sees human beings as such simple-minded people, to whose spectrum of emotion can only be either love or hate. As long as the ruler can maintain and keep total control over the territory then he does not have to worry about the welfare of the citizens. Machiavelli believes that human beings, especially subjects, are just expendable, and you can either love them, and pamper them, or hate them, and just destroy them. As long as you have the support of the masses you should be fine, no matter how many people are left to make up the masses. People are by nature inconsistent. It is easy to persuade them of something, but it is difficult to stop them from changing their minds, (Machiavelli, P. 20).
The Essay on Oedipus The King: Human Power Vs. Supernatural Power
By definition, a tragedy invokes pity or fear on the audience while telling a story of misfortune as a result of reversal of situation. This is usually due to the protagonist’s hamartia, or character flaw. All this is present in Sophocles’ play, “Oedipus the King”. The play can also be considered a tragedy due to fate. The tragic effect it causes is due to the conflict ...
” To Machiavelli people are very simplistic, it is easy to change their minds but hard to hold and maintain their attention on any one thing. Anything new or shiny can cause them to shift their attention, and because of this you have to constantly do something to keep their attention on you. He believes that human beings respond to two things, pampering and violence.
But to ensure complete control and a lack of resistance, a short period of extreme cruelty is the best to ensure this. The prince needs to be calculating and make sure that when and the length of time of the extreme cruelty that he inflicts, because too much can cause the prince to never gain/regain the trust of the people. He also believes that the state is not for the people, it’s for the ruler. Machiavelli divides the people into two classes, the nobles and the masses. The prince has a precarious balancing act between these two.
Because the nobles may help him get to power but the people who keep him in power are the masses. So he should not try and disregard him and instead try to gain their affection, because they are indeed the masses and they hold the greatest level of protection for the prince. So even if the nobles were to turn against him, he still has a chance to maintain power. Just like Machiavelli, Hobbes understanding of the natural state of the world to be conflict causes him to look at the world differently than others.
His understanding of the natural state of the world bleeds over into his understanding and assumptions of human beings, politics, ethics, and morality. He believes that humans in nature are always at a constant state of war with one another, and that the only way for humans to have proper security is to create a society with a government and laws. We are not very moral or ethical in our natural state, because the key to our survival is to be selfish and self-preserving. As humans, when averaged out, we are all equal, meaning that the weakest among us can kill the strongest among us.
Our equality is the reason why society cannot prosper. We do not need to corporate to survive. This equality makes us antagonistic, we are equal, we think the same, and we want the same thing, this causes great conflict and competition between people. Our equality transcends our mental and physical capacity. We are also equal in the terms of material things, and this causes conflict because of the scarcity in the materials that we need and want. And due to this scarcity we end up fighting one another making us unsociable.
The Essay on Nuclear Power Security Plants 2005
Winston Churchill once said "Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events." Today some people believe ...
In our natural state, which is that of fear and conflict, no man is safe, no type of security is possible, and it is just a war of everyman for himself, man fighting one another for the limited amount of resources that is available to them. It is just natural. Every other human being that you see is an implicit threat to your survival, and this is why you would fight to the death to get rid of the competition and the threats. Not because we are evil or mean, but because we are insecure, and our survival is threatened.
And when it is threatened we are going to keep fighting for our survival, and security. And security will never be enough, because you are going to be constantly trying to dominate your present. “I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire for Power after power, that ceaseth only in Death, (Hobbes, P. 66).
” Man desires power, and his hunger for power is unquenchable. This causes conflict, because not everyone is going to let you dominate him or her without you forcing your domination onto him or her.
The only way that man will stop going after power is when he is dead. The only thing that can really stop mans reckless nature and pursuit for power, is fear. Because man is truly unable to know what consequences his actions may hold, and what awaits him in the future, he is some time tedious in what he does because he fears what he doesn’t know. Man is in constant power struggles for resources, because their hunger is so constant and insatiable at times and the number of resources is limited, this results in only one thing and that is war. If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their End, endeavor to destroy, or subdue one another, (Hobbes).
” Because when you average out mental intelligence and physical strength, everyone is equal, meaning that the physically weakest can kill of the physically strongest, then no one is truly afraid of another and because of this battles between them is inevitable. This is why we created a society, with a government and laws.
The Essay on Power Politics The Framework Provided
Understanding contemporary world politics is by no means an easy feat. To merely begin the process, one must first have an ample knowledge of historical as well as modern trends in international relations, the issues at hand both now and in the past and major events that affect the field. Several groups and styles of thinking have developed throughout the centuries to make attempts at ...
We constructed this higher order in order to keep us in line, and to also help us feel more secure. Government provides us with a sense of security that we cannot provide ourselves. “…wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength,…continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, (Hobbes, P. 84).
” When man was living without the security that the government had provided, war was constant and life was short, but when the government was established it became peacetime, and security was provided for everyone.
The government now applies vb punishments and consequence for every wrong deed. Now man did not fear the unknown for their wrong doings, they now came to fear the punishments required for those bad deeds. Especially since many of the times the consequence for an action was something that was equal or greater than the crime that was committed, if it weren’t like this it would not deter man from doing evil deeds.
