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Question: Political science/philosophy orals help please!!?
I need to discuss this thesis statement in 20 minutes:
Any insights at all!? Sorry it's bit lengthy!.!.!. Thanks to those who take the time!.

The politicization of life as inaugurated by Hobbes logically results in the absolute control of politics over freedom and the use of politics for some utilitarian purpose and not anymore as the legitimate and final end where the good life can be pursued!. The institution of politicized life is articulated in the Lockean theory of property and the bourgeoise list of rights, its legitimate activity is the unrestrained ability to choose one preference over another, its theory, not political but economic!. Originally a political philosophy characterized by sobriety, liberalism, once mixed with the misguided radicalism of popular demagoguery becomes a theory to justify the destruction of established political orders and the replacement of political authority with the irrationality of unmitigated wants and instincts!.

Sorry its a bit lengthy!.!.!.Www@QuestionHome@Com


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
The Hobbes and Locke ideas--politics over freedom for Hobbes, property rights over human rights for Locke, are not supportable in the 21 century!. Here's a bit of my reasoning:

The worldview that most of us grew up with, the world view that is still a dominate force in our culture, is getting old!. Just as the Greek classical worldview of Aristotle was replaced by the scientific ideas of physicists of the Enlightenment, so to the scientific ideas of physicists of relativity theory and quantum mechanics provide ample justification to seriously question this out-dated worldview!. In the next few paragraphs, I will take a more measured look at this aging and, for the most part, unquestioned Enlightenment worldview!.

Certain consequences followed from Aristotle's philosophy!. If the nature of man was to think and develop then all human beings had a common source and a common end!. It followed necessarily that man was a social animal who participated in government to more fully develop his moral, religious and political nature!. Aristotle's worldview was drastically altered when, in the 16th century, Galileo Galilee demonstrated that moving projectiles did not behave in the way prescribed by Aristotelian science!. Galileo's investigations pointed out that sense perceptions were not contained in the objects of nature, but rather they were mere sensations projected on to those objects!. Later, Sir Isaac Newton expanded on that distinction by postulating a time as "flowing uniformly without relation to anything external," and a "space which has the same mathematical and geometrical properties always and everywhere throughout the universe!." Sensed space and time was not the invariant space and time that Newton used in his description of the universe!.

The political theorist John Locke picked up on this debate when he reasoned: "If my sensed impressions are not given by nature, then they must be somehow created by the interaction of Newton's particles with the person who I am!." Thus Locke deduced that the product of material atoms acting on a person, which he labeled mental substance, created sensed experience, or, in other words, sensed experience was the secondary product of the interaction of the material world on a mental substance!. That product, Locke called appearance!.


Since Locke had shown man to be a completely autonomous individual
while the rest of nature was conceived as a machine working out its inevitable consequences, there was no justification for social man in a social order!. The role of government had nothing to do with promoting growth and actualizing human potential, as it did with Aristotle; rather, the sole justification for government was to preserve private property!. Not everybody agreed with Locke however!.

In Locke's philosophy our knowledge of reality came through the senses and their associations, and these sensations were secondary to the real world; therefore, no knowledge of the real world could be had, only knowledge of our impressions of this world!. This contradiction was first pointed out by Bishop Berkeley and later expanded on by David Hume!. Everything sensed was a consequence of the interaction of material substance on the mental substance and mental substance, was for Locke, tabula rasa—blank slate!. Therefore, all sensed impressions were reduced to what is typically considered to be an illusion!. The affect of this consequence is that we equate social status and privilege to the businessman, engineer, and scientist because they deal with the real world, while musicians, poets, and artists, since they do not deal with the real world, are patronized only for their monetary success, otherwise they are considered second class citizens or worse, social parasites!.

Because of the recent changes in scientific thinking, this old world view, the world view of Locke and Hobbs, has become suspect!. The relativity of space and time for instance, and the reduction of space to geometrical presuppositions, the ‘ideal meanings’ that get used in the interpretation of phenomena, have altered the landscape that defines the material world!. This list continues with the uncertainty relationships for smallest particles, the behavior of micro-world particles conforming to laws of probability,--and these changes, at best, complicate matters, and, at worst, contradict the worldview principles that followed naturally from the scientific ideas of physicists of the Enlightenment!. The real question now becomes: What are these “facts” referring to if we can no longer “kick them around with our foot!?” Answer that question and we’re in a whole new “ball game”, one where “property rights” will no longer distinguish citizens, and nations into “classes”!.
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Metaphysic’s and philosophical ideals replaced with a reverted individuation concerning petty personal opinions over overshadowing reasoning towards stability and unification of the greater good!. This political engineering facilitates spin doctoring and its constantly whirring wheels of motion upon a stationary conveyor belt of a delusional sense of freedom and will!. Politicising all issues than resolving with applied logic feeds the demand of manufactured supply to profit those seated above the furore and creating controversy to distract and allay focus upon the monkeys holding the organ grinder to ransom!. Demagoguery has become the rule of an age afflicted and plagued by disillusioned and angry citizens of an empire long ago sold to the highest bidder being the majority, the opinions and views of whom led by the same and one media profiting from the upheaval and unrest!. None rule and all are opportuned and availed with promises of illusory gains benefiting neither recipient nor society contrived to increase the cycle of wanton need!. An inflamed people are a profitable people!. Intervention and conquer of the parasites would create peace deemed by such inept bastions of propaganda as decidedly unprofitable!.Www@QuestionHome@Com