PHL267H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Amour-Propre, Body Politic, Thomas Hobbes
Document Summary
The social contract: the discourse on inequality and the social contract. The social contract hardly mentions the two central psychological concepts of the. The two works are united by a common concern with avoiding personal dependence and relations of domination. A possible interpretation: the social contract describes a social world in which freedom and equality minimizes inflamed amour propre. Among other things, this enhances compassion: objections to hobbes and locke. The hobbesian social contract reduces the subject to slavery, which is inconsistent with his dignity as a free being. The lockean social contract protects those who have against those who have-not, while masking that power behind a fa ade of formal equality: ***the problem*** Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. That question i think i can answer. (i. 1) Question is: to what extent is social contract and constraint legitimate.
