Читать книгу Political Theory - Pete Woodcock - Страница 15

This chapter will compare and contrast the works of English philosopher Thomas Hobbes and the Genevan Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Hobbes will illustrate that in their natural condition man is violent and nasty, and left to their own devices, that is to say without a state, they will end up killing one another. Rousseau will counter that man’s anti-sociability is not a product of nature; indeed, he claims that in his natural state man is good if not moral, but rather a product of civilized man. Civilization has corrupted our innate goodness. We will also briefly examine here the thoughts on the nature of good and evil by German philosopher Nietzsche, who argues that these concepts are not unchangeable over time, and that which we call good these days is often life destroying.