If you want to write like this, in HTML ("hypertext markup language"), you will need to learn how to do so. Read about it in your History on the Internet booklet, and visit some online sites, like The One Minute HTML Primer. If you need an HTML editor that will fit one a disk, you can get one from my own site by just clicking here. If you want a free home page of your own (where you can post your essays online, just join Tripod and get started in making one ... it is not difficult.
Assignment #1
Your first writing assignment in this class will deal with the contrasting views about government represented by the writings of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. What you will need to do first is to read carefully the short selections which I distributed in class, read also the accounts of their views provided in your textbook (in chapter 14) and then write not more than sixty lines on the question I mentioned in class, namely, to a) Compare and contrast the political philosophies of Hobbes and Locke.
b) Would you rather live under a government designed by Hobbes or Locke?
c) Why?
Your response should be single-spaced, with paragraphs separated by a blank line, and run to about sixty lines or so. Put your name at the top right side of the page, along with your course number and section, as in
John Q. Student Hs 112C and center the title, as in
This Is My Title
Save copies of all your papers to a 3.5" disk, and also use Hotmail to email them to "hcourse@hotmail.com" (no quotes) as a backup.
Where we will post them online as a group remains open because I have yet to check out Nicenet to see if the problems have cleared ... but there is no reason at all why you should not go there and register as a user now because that's where they'll be going if the system can work with the computer center at QC. I've created a new "virtual classroom" there for you. Go to Nicenet, and click on "Join A Class." When prompted for the "Class Key," enter "D983T24" (exactly like that, but with no quotes." You will then be brought to the registration process. You have to choose a logon name and a password (each of which can be whatever you like). You will also have to provide for me your real names (first and last) so I will know your identity. The process takes just a few minutes, and by way of testing it, I've posted this document there. The only way we can find out if it works for us is by trying it out. So for now, I will be posting assignments to you via email, by leaving them at my own home page, and by leaving them at Nicenet too.
About Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes, b. Apr. 5, 1588, d. Dec. 4, 1679, was an English philosopher, scientist, and political theorist. The son of an Anglican clergyman, he entered Oxford University when he was 14 or 15 years old, receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1608. He then became a tutor to the Cavendish family and traveled with them a number of times to the Continent. After 1621 he translated a few of Francis Bacon’s essays into Latin, and in 1628 he published an English version of Thucydides’ works. During his stay in France from 1629 to 1631, he studied Euclid and became especially interested in mathematics. On his third continental trip (1634-1637), he met and was influenced by Galileo, Marin Mersenne, and Rene Descartes. In 1646 he became tutor to the prince of Wales, the future Charles II, then exiled in Paris. There Hobbes wrote his main work, Leviathan; or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil (1651), a philosophical study of the political absolutism that replaced the supremacy of the medieval church. Four years later he published his De Corpore (Concerning Body), in which he restricted philosophy to a study of bodies in motion. In his Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance (1656), he elaborated a theory of psychological determinism. His writings provoked immediate opposition. Hobbes considered philosophy a practical study of two kinds of bodies: natural and civil. The latter, "made by the wills and agreement of men," he called "the Commonwealth." He declared that natural bodies include everything for which there is rational knowledge of causal processes. Hobbes took a mechanistic view, explaining things in terms of the movement of bodies through space. He also considered human thought as an action of bodies. Since everyone is subject to physical and mathematical laws that allow no exceptions, one’s apparent freedom is simply the absence of external constraint. Leviathan has been termed nominalist, materialist, absolutist, and anticlerical. The work’s nominalism lies in Hobbes’s rejection of any universal reality corresponding to universal concepts and words. He considered all reality as individual and all groupings as conventional. In Leviathan, Hobbes held that the natural state of humans is constant war with each other; their lives are "nasty, brutish, and short." Society arises only by convention. From self-interest, people make peace and obtain security inasmuch as they delegate total power to the state, that is, ultimately to the monarch. Once that happens, the monarch’s decrees are absolute in all areas of life, including the family and religion. Hobbes concluded that rebellion against the state breaks society’s basic contract and is punishable by whatever penalty the monarch may exact in order to protect his subjects from a return to the original state of nature. The ideas of Thomas Hobbes were challenged by both the parliamentarians and churchmen of his day; some considered trying him for heresy. Nevertheless, he has been recognized as a great political theorist and philosopher.
For more on Hobbes, click here.
About John Locke
John Locke, b. Aug. 29, 1632, d. Oct. 28, 1704, was an English philosopher and political theorist, the founder of British empiricism. He undertook his university studies at Christ Church, Oxford. At first, he followed the traditional classical curriculum but then turned to the study of medicine and science. Although Locke did not actually earn a medical degree, he obtained a medical license. He joined the household of Anthony Ashley Cooper, later 1st earl of Shaftesbury, as a personal physician. He became Shaftesbury’s advisor and friend. Through him, Locke held minor government posts and became involved in the turbulent politics of the period. In 1675, Locke left England to live in France, where he became familiar with the doctrines of Rene Descartes and his critics. He returned to England in 1679 while Shaftesbury was in power and pressing to secure the exclusion of James, duke of York (the future King James II) from the succession to the throne. Shaftesbury was later tried for treason, and although he was acquitted, he fled to Holland. Because he was closely allied with Shaftesbury, Locke also fled to Holland in 1683; he lived there until the overthrow (1688) of James II. In 1689, Locke returned to England in the party escorting the princess of Orange, who was to be crowned Queen Mary II of England. In 1691, Locke retired to Oates in Essex, the household of Sir Francis and Lady Masham. During his years at Oates, Locke wrote and edited, and received many influential visitors, including Sir Isaac Newton. He continued to exercise political influence. His friendships with prominent government officers and scholars made him one of the most influential men of the 17th century. Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) is one of the classical documents of British empirical philosophy. The essay had its origin in a series of discussions with friends that led Locke to the conclusion that the principal subject of philosophy had to be the extent of the mind’s ability to know He set out "to examine our abilities and to see what objects our understandings were or were not fitted to deal with." The Essay is a principal statement of empiricism, and, broadly speaking, was an effort to formulate a view of knowledge consistent with the findings of Newtonian science. Locke began the Essay with a critique of the rationalistic idea that the mind is equipped with innate ideas, ideas that do not arise from experience. He then turned to the elaboration of his own empiricism: "Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas; how comes this to be furnished? . . . whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in a word, from experience." What experience provides is ideas, which Locke defined as "the object of the understanding when a man thinks." He held that ideas come from two sources: sensation, which provides ideas about the external world, and reflection, or introspection, which provides the ideas of the internal workings of the mind. Locke’s view that experience produces ideas, which are the immediate objects of thought, led him to adopt a causal or representative view of human knowledge. In perception, according to this view, people are not directly aware of physical objects. Rather, they are directly aware of the ideas that objects "cause" in them and that "represent" the objects in their consciousness. A similar view of perception was presented by earlier thinkers such as Galileo and Descartes. Locke’s view raised the question of the extent to which ideas are like the objects that cause them. His answer was that only some qualities of objects are like ideas. He held that primary qualities of objects, or the mathematically determinable qualities of an object, such as shape, motion, weight, and number, exist in the world, and that ideas copy them. Secondary qualities, those which arise from the senses, do not exist in objects as they exist in ideas. According to Locke, secondary qualities, such as taste, "are nothing in the objects themselves but powers to produce ideas in use by their primary qualities." Thus, when an object is perceived, a person’s ideas of its shape and weight represent qualities to be found in the object itself. Color and taste, however, are not copies of anything in the object. One conclusion of Locke’s theory is that genuine knowledge cannot be found in natural science, because the real essences of physical objects that science studies cannot be known. It would appear that genuine certainty can be achieved only through mathematics. Locke’s view of knowledge anticipated developments by later philosophers and exercised an important influence on the subsequent course of philosophical thought. Locke’s considerable importance in political thought is better known. As the first systematic theorist of the philosophy of liberalism, Locke exercised enormous influence in both England and America. In his Two Treatises of Government (1690), Locke set forth the view that the state exists to preserve the natural rights of its citizens. When governments fail in that task, citizens have the right and sometimes the duty to withdraw their support and even to rebel. Locke opposed Thomas Hobbes’s view that the original state of nature was "nasty, brutish, and short," and that individuals through a social contract surrendered for the sake of self-preservation their rights to a supreme sovereign who was the source of all morality and law. Locke maintained that the state of nature was a happy and tolerant one, that the social contract preserved the preexistent natural rights of the individual to life, liberty, and property, and that the enjoyment of private rights the pursuit of happiness led, in civil society, to the common good. Locke’s notion of government was a limited one: the checks and balances among branches of government (later reflected in the US Constitution) and true representation in the legislature would maintain limited government and individual liberties. A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) expressed Locke’s view that, within certain limits, no one should dictate the form of another’s religion. Other important works include The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), in which Locke expressed his ideas on religion, and Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693).
For more on Locke, click here.