PHIL 1010 Study Guide - Final Guide: Liberal Democracy, Deliberative Democracy, Positio

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHIL 1010
• Professor: Victoria Burke

Document Summary

A right that people are born with. Not given to people by the state. State of nature: the hypothetical conditions of what the lives of people might have been like before societies came into existence. ) People are naturally driven by self-interest, the need to secure themselves. Without government, each person herself would be the sole determiner of her actions, as well as the judge, jury, and executioner wherever disputes arise. There would be no recognized authority to arbitrate disputes in a state of nature. State of nature would make impossible the security upon which comfortable, sociable and civilized life depends. We have to submit to a mutually recognized public authority, since the state of nature is a mere war, where private appetite is the measure of good and evil. Concludes that it is constituted by antagonistic struggle. Everyone is naturally willing to fight one another; life is nasty, brutish, short.