Previous - 85. HOA + Venting
Social Contract
The Trump election; the return to a State of Nature on my city streets; and Crash Course, Philosophy progressing into Ethics, has all conspired to make me want to read about Thomas Hobbs, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau -- something I did as little as possible in college. I found this interesting piece about the Social Contract, and I've read through the first two sections.Since I'm reading their view of man's State of Nature after being exposed to more reality based ideas from cultural anthropology, I value this more for telling me what they think men are like and what they think men want. I like that Hobbs rejects religion as being any sort of foundation for morality. I don't like Rouseau's insistence on true democracy, but current events are proving him right about the need for this.
Our national "Red" vs "Blue" division, as well as the breakdown of order on our city sidewalks, suggest that our Social Contract is no longer valid. (San Francisco has decided, through political and judicial decisions, that it will neither jail nor fine people violating basic civic rules like "Thou shalt not shit on the sidewalk." Our sidewalks are returning to an actual State of Nature that doesn't look much like what any of these thinkers imagined.) Since the original American Contract was hammered out over 200 years ago, when the population was a fraction of what it is now, and since even then it was more what Locke had in mind than what Rousseau had in mind, I'm not sure how this redrafting of the Social Contract can work.
It may turn out that Rousseau is right, but we may still have to fall back on Hobbs. That is, I believe, what happened at the end of the Roman Republic.
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