CRM 1301 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Positive Law, Natureserve, Rationality
Document Summary
Social contract theory the view that persons" moral and/or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement among them to form the society in which they live. The most basic difference lies in their view of human nature. For hobbes, humans are eager of power and under the state of nature we tend to kill each other. For this reason, we need a social contract (in order to survive). For locke, the state of nature is not as pessimistic as hobbes. We can collaborate, but the problem is in property. Locke wrote something like when we have issues of who is the owner of what (specially under scarcity) we need the social contract protecting our work materialized as property. Hobbes is writing at a time where faith and religion lost its whole. Science takes you one step further than philosophy. Notion of happiness is common; hobbes gives us reason to question things.