My Attitude to Political Philosophy

This lecture was very interesting, but in the same time little confusing to me. I read additional literature in order to develop my view on this topic. I found very interesting Descartes’s expressions about God, human and soul.

The only existence in which I am quite sure is my own, that is, the existence of my spirit, soul and thoughts, whereas the being of the whole material world (and of my own body) remains in doubt. We do not have conclusive data confirming the truth of our sensations. It can be just result of our imagination. However, according to Descartes' philosophy, there is one of our ideas that we could not create ourselves, which we must rather recognize as given to us, since it contains a more complete reality than the one we find in ourselves. And I agree with Descartes that this is the idea of God - the most perfect being, unlimited being, directly opposed to the sense of the limitation of our own being and therefore inspired by God himself, inherent to us before any experience, like the idea we have about ourselves.

It was very interesting to see how we can apply philosophy to politic. First time I faced the term Political Philosophy. Thomas Hobbes played a big role in establishing political philosophy. Thomas Hobbes defended the idea of a person's asociality, that man by nature is not a social being, because, from his point of view, "... civil societies are not simple assemblies, but alliances for the creation of which treaties and loyalty are necessary." In order to form a civil society “natural sociality" is not enough.

We should look more carefully on Hobbes’s position; it expresses the radical nature of the Hobbesian model of the natural state. In a natural state, a person is free in the sense that any act will not be considered unfair to anyone, because in a natural state there are neither civil laws nor "divine." In such a natural state, it is simply impossible neither to sin against God, nor to commit crimes.

From the point of view of T. Hobbes, when establishing the institution of the state, people sacrifice their natural rights, and from the moment of establishment only the state is considered to be the only authorized person solving the problem of preserving society, its stability and tranquility. Thus, T. Hobbes formulates the main goal of the state - to protect the life and property of members of society, using for this purpose such means that the state deems necessary.

According to the theoretical construction of T. Hobbes, the state is endowed with unlimited powers in achieving its goal. It has no control by civil society due to the fact that the conditions for the establishment of a state, out of a state of natural state, involve the refusal of people from the rights of this state and their transfer to the state. Thus, the right of the natural state - the right to do anything for the sake of self-preservation - is acquired by the state and since then it has only been authorized to decide what is good for people and what is bad for the preservation of their life and property. Moreover, the contract is concluded only between citizens, whereas the government is not a subject of the contractual process and, therefore, it does not have legal responsibility. It is no accident that his main political-legal treatise is called "Leviathan". To describe the essence of the state, he uses the image of the biblical monster Leviathan, devouring people.

After watching the video “The Age of Reason” from the second part of our lecture, I realized how this period was very important in building new society, new points of view, new laws, and new discoveries. It is the era that changed our world and created new stereotypes. The philosophical basis of the Renaissance worldview, as well as the medieval, was the ancient Neoplatonism, the Platonic doctrine of ideas developed by Neoplatonists Plotinus and Proclus comprehensively, with an intimate experience, with immersion in the mysticism of the deepest philosophical concepts of the One, the World Mind, the World Soul and the Cosmos. Antique Neo-Platonism was cosmological. It was polytheism in full accordance with Greek mythology. Medieval thinkers with their monotheism began talking about the absolute personality, linking it with both good and beauty.

The change in the person's ideas about the universe, about the living nature and about him-/herself, which had extremely important consequences, was due to the fact that for 100 years since the XVIII century. The idea of change as such, about changing over long periods of time, in one word the idea of evolution, has evolved. In the current views of man on the world the main role plays the understanding that the universe, the stars, the earth and all living creatures inhabiting it have a long history that was not predetermined or programmed. It gave people new understanding about our planet and surrounding environment. The history of continuous gradual change caused by the action of more or less directed natural processes that correspond to the laws of physics. This manifests the generality of the evolution of the cosmic and the evolution of the biological.