Let’s discuss online and write our next essay about this classic opposition of ideas in terms of our current dilemma with Covid-19.
Both authors’ essays appear in Reading the World: Ideas That Matter [all editions] and can be found online easily. Each is a classic essay which has been reproduced and analyzed ad infinitum. Your purpose here is NOT to snatch some essay from the Internet and copy and paste. Instead let’s take this crucial moment in our world to think about what these two minds had to say and apply that to our current crisis. You can tackle it from a number of different points of view: private property; science and technology; human nature, crowd and herd behavior; nation-states, etc.
Hobbes’ “Leviathan” was published in 1651. In it, he described the state of nature as one where,
“(T)here be no propriety, no Dominion, no Mine and Thine distinct; but (only) that to be every man’s that he can get; and for so long as he can keep it.” Hobbes viewed the state of nature as one of war “of every man, against every man.” He believed that in this natural state, “(E)very man has a Right to every thing; even to one another’s body” and that a man’s life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
https://www.mackinac.org/10295 (Links to an external site.)
Locke wrote in 1690 in “his Second Treatise on Government that individuals enter into a two-way contract with the state, surrendering absolute liberty in exchange for the protection of life, liberty, and the right to own property. When the state fails to uphold its end of the bargain, he believed, the people have a right to renegotiate the terms of the contract. “
https://digital.wwnorton.com/3078/r/goto/cfi/50!/4 (Links to an external site.)
The selections and questions after the selections can be found in Austin or at https://digital.wwnorton.com/3078/r/goto/cfi/50!/4 (Links to an external site.)
(Links to an external site.)Use the questions after each essay to discuss them online and begin your rough draft process.
Your online dialogue = at least one substantial paragraph of 5-8 sentences + two responses to your peers.
Here are some prompts to help you in writing this essay. Use 2+ in your 800-850 word essay:
Some say we’re in World War III with this virus. Would you agree or not? Why?
“In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently, no culture of the earth, no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” -Hobbes
Are we valuing life? How, why or why not?
What are the advantages or disadvantages of government’s role in handling this crisis?
in 1651 or 1690, there weren’t the type, extent and immediacy of media as there are now. How does media reflect the ideas in these two classic essays?
