philosophy & film final

5th goal of life

Goal of life = take what you can

• 1. Determine if you can achieve peace

• 2. If not, then go to war.

1) Determine if you can achieve peace

• 1. General rule of reason “that every man ought to endeavor peace”. But, “during the time that men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in War.”

• War = “Of every man, against every man”

  • Remember: war is not equal to battle only. 

  • Instead, it is a tract of time wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known. 

War is a disposition thereto. War happens when there’s not a common power and people are disposed to hurt each other.

1st law of Nature

• = to seek peace and follow it. 

• 3 passions that incline men to peace: 

  • Fear of death 

  • Desire for the things necessary to commodious living 

  • Hope that by your industry you can attain them – hope that if you just work hard enough, you can get yourself some commodious living

2nd law of nature

• to be willing, when others are too, to lay down your right to all things. However…it won’t work in 3 situations.

  • …it won’t work if other men won’t agree to it. 

  • …it won’t work bc covenant with brute beasts is impossible. You also can’t convince brute beasts to lay down their right to all things.

  •  …it won’t work bc a covenant not to defend myself from force is always void. 

3rd law of nature

• perform covenants made. If you have made a covenant as part of your attempt to seek peace and follow it, the 3rd thing that has to happen is that you perform the covenants that you have agreed to. 

  • → Justice. Where no covenant hath preceded, no action can be unjust. 

  • However…  

  • Nothing is more easily broken than a man’s word, without fear of some evil consequence (aka unless there is fear of some evil consequence)

  • There must be some coercive power to get men to live up to their covenants.

  • The coercive force is going to compel men…by…terror to maintain their covenants.

  • Laws of nature are contrary to our natural passions: Pride, Revenge, etc.

  • “Covenants without the sword are but words” 

  • So…if there is no Power great enough for our security, you have to rely on your own strength and art. 

  • Question – What is a sufficient power? How terrifying does my govt need to be to keep everything together? It’s determined by comparison with the enemy we fear. 

2) Go to war

• Question – how does war work? Men are generally equal in mind and body. Not actually, just no one is the hulk compared to anyone else. Ex. even the weakest man can kill the strongest by treachery or confederacy with others. 

• → Equality of hope in attaining our ends. Because you realize that you’re generally equal to everyone else, that gets you equality of hope. Everyone can rationally believe that they could end up being in charge. 

• Bc of hope, men become enemies = when 2 men desire the same thing and will not share.

• → if you become enemies with someone, you need to destroy or subdue one another. 

• Moral: if you plant it, build it, etc, someone will try to take it from you. Someone else will come along to try to take it from them, and so on. 

3 (4) motivations for fighting:

• 1. Competition = invades for gain = specifically, they’re trying to make self the master of others (persons, wives, etc.)

• 2. Diffidence = defense. Trying to defend your person, wife, cattle, children, etc. 

• 3. Reputation = fighting for trifles. You’re willing to fight because someone else has slighted you in some way, harmed your reputation. 

• (4.) Some take pleasure in acts of conquest. Some people just enjoy fighting.

Question – How should I fight?

• Anticipation – always hit them first.

• You should keep anticipating threats until you can see no other power great enough to endanger you. 

• Outside a covenant, nothing is unjust. No place for notions of right and wrong. 

  • When you’re in a state of war, there is no dominion, no mine and thine. It is only yours for so long, as he can keep it. Nothing actually belongs to you, even your body. It’s only yours until you can keep it, and you can only keep it until there is someone stronger than you that can endanger your safety.

2 cardinal virtues in war that you ought to develop:

• 1. Force

• 2. Fraud

3rd question – are men really this bad?

• If the government breaks down, will my neighbor harm me at the first opportunity? Hobbes says, yes. 

  • Remember = currently there are laws. If you have time to sit around and argue about this stuff, there must be laws and agents that guarantee your safety. Ask yourself the following 3 questions; if you say yes to any then you agree that men are that bad:

  • 1. Do I arm myself when I travel?

  • 2. Do you lock your door when you sleep?

  • 3. Even within your house, do you lock your chests against your children and servants?

• Hobbes says, what I tell you is not equal to history. Never generally so all over the world. Humans don’t move naturally from a state of war to a state of not war. Instead, he’s telling us what happens in specific types of situations. You’ll find yourself in a state of war if your country collapses and you are in a civil war, or if you are a king. Also, first argument by the Americas – no overarching sovereign, just a bunch of people fighting with each other over who gets to be there in the first place. 

7th goal of life

Goal of life = take what is yours

1. Mix your labor or money with something 

2. Kill thieves

1) God gave the world to men…

1) God gave the world to men in common, for the support and comfort of their being.

• So, there was no original private dominion. 

• Question = how can they appropriate part of it to use? How can an individual person have part of this world to themselves that was originally done in common? 

  • Answer = every man has a property in his own person. 

  • Aka the labor of his body is properly his. 

  • So, if you have removed something out of the state that nature hath provided, then you have mixed your labor with it. At that point, it becomes his property. By mixing your labor with something that was in its original state, that thing has become your property. 

  • This leads to a situation where it excludes the common right of other men. 

  • Ex. acorns picked up under the tree. 

Ex. “venison, which nourishes the wild Indian” the Americas already implicitly work the way he says the entire world works.

Question = when did it begin to be his?

• Answer = at the moment of first gathering. Because, at that moment, you have added something more than nature.

• Ex. fish anyone catches in the ocean. That is a moment of first gathering. 

• Ex. “The deer that that is the Indians’ who hath killed it.”

• Ex. “The hare that anyone is hunting, is thought to be his who pursues her during the chase.” Basically, when you want it, it’s yours. When you point at it and go “mine”, you are pursuing it. You have added something beyond mere nature by simply pursuing, wanting it. 

Question = how much stuff can I have?

• Answer = you can have as much as you can make use of without spoilage. 

• Second answer = land works in the same way. You can have as much land as you can make use of without letting it spoil.

• Ex. you might be busy tilling, planting, improving your land…you can do as much of that and have as much land as long as that land doesn’t spoil.

Remember: part 1

• Remember: we are currently talking about “the beginning” 

  • would not prejudice the rest of mankind.

  • Ex. plant in some inland, vacant place of America. Since there’s “no one there”, you’re not prejudicing anyone. In reality though, if no one’s there, it’s bc Europeans probably killed all the indigenous people. 

Remember: part 2

• Remember: God “gave it to the use of the industrious and rational”

  • Contrast the “uncultivated waste of America” with “ten acres of equally fertile land in Devonshire". If you want an example of who counts as industrious and rational, contrast the productivity you get from America with 10 acres in Devonshire. 

  • “If the fruits rotted…that person can be punished and invaded” “not withstanding his enclosure” even if the person is saying those are my apples I’ve enclosed them, if they’re allowing them to perish unindustriously, it’s okay to punish them by invading them.

  • That ground can “be looked on as waste” → so it might be the possession of any other

Remember: part 3

• Remember: spoilage is the “natural limit” of property 

  • But… if a person barters away their plums, which would rot in a week, for nuts that would last a year, he did no injury. If he gave his “nuts for a piece of metal” or exchanged his sheep for shells, then that person might “heap up as much of these durable things as he pleases.”

  • Thus, in this manner he may come to be “exceeding the bounds of [formerly] just property.” you get around the natural limit of property. Because, injustice is not equal to the largeness of your possessions. Injustice = “perishing of anything uselessly”

  • Thus came in the use of money, money was invented. At that point, people “by consent, [people] agreed to larger and larger possessions.”

  • Thus, at that point in time, “men have agreed to a disproportionate and unequal possession of the earth.” because, you can “exchange the overplus for gold and silver and hoard those.” It is agreeable that a small number of people have way more than others bc all people agree silver has value and that it never spoils, they all agree spoilage is what property is based on and that hoarding gold and silver is an okay thing for someone to do. This is how we go from an empty earth with a couple people pursuing rabbits to 1627.

2) killing thieves

• Remember: “in the beginning, all the world was America”. This means all of the world was equal to “a state of perfect freedom to order your possessions as you think fit.” = it is also an example of a “state also of equality”

• What regulates this state of equality? Law of nature = “no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”

• “Unless it be to do justice on an offender”

in a state of nature,

• In a state of nature, “everyone has a right to punish transgressors” of the law of nature. Because, “the offender lives by another rule than that of reason.” ~ analogous to a wolf or lion. They have “no other rule than force and violence.”

• → state of war. In a state of war, it is reasonable to assume that this person would make me a slave. Because, why should they stop with my property? 

• So, in a state of war, it is “lawful for a man to kill a thief.”

• State of nature vs. state of war: 

  • One is a state of peace, the other is a state of enmity (hatred and hostility). 

  • Once begun, the state of war continues until the aggressor offers peace and reconciliation and “repairs any wrongs and secure the innocent for the future”