s i c k

I've been sick for the past FIVE days. Stayed home all weekend, which was the best, but still didn't recover much. Spent the weekend studying and reading, although on Sunday I had the sudden urge to go jogging which I did, then my lungs felt like they were on fire. I'm so out of shape! :D

I just realized I haven't posted anything in awhile! I've been pre-occupied with school, and nothing really to post about actually...

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I've been re-reading a lot of philosophical concepts lately, mostly from philosophers from the enlightenment because my history professor went over them lightly. The two main concepts I've been thinking about:

 (1) The Social Contract: Which is just the relationship between people and their government. This basically is a contract that contains the chaos of human societies, as believed strongly by Thomas Hobbes. The social contract is a "contract" of sorts that help guide human behaviors, it gives us rules to abide in order to maintain a civilized way of life. Without it, it is said we'd be in chaos, because humans cannot live in peace in our natural state. Thomas Hobbes believed this concept very strongly because he thought humans are the worst and that in the state of nature they would just kill each other off.
What I think is that the social contract is meant to support human morals. Especially in large societies there are more people, so since Hobbes believes that humans suck naturally, more humans together would be disastrous!  Hobbes talks about this and the state of nature in his book: The Leviathan. Which I'm picking up from the library tomorrow.  

(2) The State of Nature: Is the state of humans before the social contract. It is humans in our most base form, and according to Hobbes we are horrible in this form because we don't have anything to abide. But according to John Locke, humans are generally good and that the state of nature isn't bad at all. Locke only believe in the social contract if a human society grew larger, but even then, a minimal government with few rules would best suit. I'm also planning on reading Locke's essays on human nature. 

I've always been interested in these two concepts, especially interested in Hobbes and Locke's ideas  because their views were very different. Lately I've been thinking of the two concepts, wondering how society would be without the social contract.

But, the social contract would only work amongst society but then again, a form of government is established the moment you are born. That government is called: family. We have either a mom or dad, or both, older sister or brother and little sister or bother. Certain circumstances would prove differently, like a child thrown into the wilderness and forced to live by instinct which could be considered as the state of nature.

So what I believe is that the social contract works amongst people, not only a family even a group of people. The state of nature would apply to a single person.... In Locke's belief he believe humans were generally could and could survive without a government/sort of enforcement, which I believe to be true in certain cases. But it would be interested to see how the world would be without government, there would most certainly be chaos, especially if it occurred today. Or even a minimal government, how would that be?

Of course from this we could assume Locke is a libertarian, the Father of Liberalism actually. I'm not a libertarian, I'm not anything until I've gotten the time to figure everything out. Just curious about these two concepts, which is why I want to read more about them. It's obvious that what little I know about the two don't compared to what more there is, so once I've become more familiar I'm sure I'll have more thoughts on them.