Hobbes, Locke and Filmer

Hobbes and Locke

• Tolerance towards every protestant was a factor.
• It was believed that men were not placed in their positions by God.
• Kings held their positions because God put them there.
• Political programs incorporated biblical language.
• The Bible served as a justification for various actions.

Hobbes

• Advocated for absolutism
• Authored Leviathan
• Defined by homo homini lupus
• A philosopher
• Believed humans are unsocial creatures that were not made for community life
• Passion is the driving force of man
• Equated possession with power
• Viewed man as a predator
• Defined common-wealth as the State
• Known as "Theorist of absolutism"

Locke

• Supported constitutionalism
• A philosopher who studied medicine at Oxford
• Described government authority as: a compound of ideas, attitudes, and patterns of behavior
• The principle derives from and is limited by a body of fundamental law.

Sir Robert Filmer

• A lawyer and political theorist with royalist leanings

Property

• Hobbes argued that it can only exist in the state.
• Locke considered it the one guided principle.
• Hobbes tied property to the pursuit of possession.

Eighteenth Century

• Englishmen considered their country the most civilized and free.
• Englishmen had the liberty to express their opinions publicly
• Parliament made all major decisions.
• Political disagreement was considered natural within the country
• Two main political parties existed: the Tories and the Whigs.
• Voting rights were tied to land ownership.
• Freedom of domestic trade was present.
• London experienced growth through migration, mostly within the country
• Daughters of rich merchants could marry into aristocratic families.
• Circulation of goods and knowledge increased.
• New publications like "The Taller" and "The Spectator", though resembled magazines more.
• Subscription magazines were made for public consumption and discussion, often in coffeehouses.
• Coffeehouses were run by women, who were not allowed to be customers themselves.
• The Enlightenment provided a philosophical soundtrack, based on anti-traditional rationalism.
• Locke believed that the mind is a clean slate.
• All knowledge is gained through experience, both external and internal.
• The mind needs data to function.
• God is watching over the world.
• The Enlightenment mainly concerned a small group of humans.
• The Royal Society was founded by Royal charter from Charles II in 1662.
• There was a focus on humanistic education.

Key Terms: Commercial Society

• Parliament was dominated by liberal Whigs (moneyed interest) and conservative Tories (landed interest).
• New kings from the house of Hanover were virtually powerless.
• Abortive Jacobite rebellions occurred in Scotland in 1715 and 1745.
• The Enlightenment propagated freedom of the rational individual (white, Protestant, male, middle class).
• Postulated radical biological difference between men and women.
• British universities had a bad reputation.
• A Grand Tour through France, Germany, and Italy was essential for acquiring taste, language, networking skills, and understanding the British political and religious system.
• New notion of individuality and public sphere emerged, with the gentleman ideal was attainable for the middle class.
• Civic virtues were debated and popularized in magazines like The Spectator.
• Trade and merchants were seen as drivers of progress and national moral/economic growth.
• Goods and objects became central for displaying individual value.

Capitalism & Romanticism

• Drama and poetry were valued higher than novels.
• Novels were based on antiquity.
• Travel and life-writing became popular.
• A newly booming market emerged.
• There was no overpopulation (in contrast to other countries).
• There were no food shortages.
• Enough workplaces were available,
• English people saw themselves as progressive and fit to rule.
• Colonization and ruling over Ireland was common.
• The English believed "uncivilized Ireland” needed their help.
• Trade around the globe leading to a triangular trade system helped win the new empire.
• The merchant was romanticized
• Land was valuable when there was trade
• England was a leader in trading and banking.
• A scandal around Fable of the Bees occurred.
• There was a free market instead of private space
• Criticism to capitalism started
• Trade war
• England weighed to not lose its leading position
• Newly established colonies in North America emerged.
• There was a need for cheaper labor, leading to slaves from Africa.
• England won African colonies in a trade war with France.
• The British East India Company became a military power and took up almost all of the Indian subcontinent.
• Anti-slavery movements emerged.
• Mercantilism involved nationalist economic policy maximize the exports and minimize the imports of an economy.
• Romanticism came as a counter movement against mercantilism.

Industrialisation

• Greatly changed everyday life more than politics
• Positioning of the country as an island was favorable
• Spinning jenny 1769
• Iconic building material was steel
• Steam engine by james watt 1776
• Train schedules led to standard time by created synchronisation of time
• People left to live in cities
• Overpopulation resulted
• Child labor prohibited in 1819
• Information travelled faster, telephone, telegraph
• 1840-50 potato famine in Ireland (agricultural) 1 million died 1.5 million emigrated.
• Utilitarianism is considered the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

Key Terms

• Adam Smith's Laissez faire-doctrine: the state should not interfere with economic processes, mans natural urge to trade, surplus value, division of labour
• David Ricardo criticized unproductive aristocracy
• Utilitarianism: greatest happiness of the greatest number
• Spinning Jenny, steam engine led to a shift in demography of Britain, rise of industrial cities, urbanisation, plight of the working class, alienation, and slums like London's East End.
• Middle Class people worship principle of self-help (Samuel Smiles) Utopian Socialism: Robert Owen's New Lanark
• State of England Novels (Dickens, Gaskell, Gissing) and social journalism (Mayhew, Sims)

Science and Empire

• Early theories of the world were: neptunic or plutonic creation
• Carl Linnaeus created system of taxonomy
• Charles Lyell explained geology: world much older than 6,000 years
• Darwin & Darwinism's: Theory of Evolution against Lamarck, natural selection, sexual selection, Descent of Man, apes are not just seperate (‘Ape Theory')
• Showed new gaze on 'primitive' peoples, biological difference was constructed, it's scientific racism

Victorian cultural criticism

• Victorian era as an age of crisis
• Fear of accelerating change, political radicalism
• Desire for radical renewal
• Conservative: consciousness establishes existence
• Progressive: existence determines consciousness
• Thomas Carlyle criticized Commodity fetishism, alienation, abolition of private property
• William Godwin: people become more reasonable and fraternal, state become superfluous (evolutionary Anarchism)
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Great war and modernism

• "industrial mass production became industrial mass slaughter, where man is merely an instrument"
• Can be depicted as the end of the long 19th century, since it represents the end of one empire and the start of another
• red poppy symbolizes all deaths of the war
• People thought it would be over by christmas

Welfare to brexit

• Building a Welfare State (pensions, public healthcare, unemployment insurance) after WWII overcame class society and pacify social tensions
• Financed by nationalization of key industries and services (coal, steel, shipbuilding, Bank of England, British Airways, British Rail, telephone, gas, electricity)
• "Social Democratic Consensus”: policy supported by both Labour and Progressives ("Butskellism")
• After initial rapid growth and jobs for all, worsening financial crisis and rising unemployment since the late 1960s
• Neoliberalism: privatization of industries and services, breaking the power of trade unions, massive cuts in public spending, commodification of all fields of society
• Return to the values of self-help and economical egoism

Overview of the political theories of Hobbes, Locke, and Filmer, including their views on absolutism, constitutionalism, and the nature of man. It touches upon men and their positions, biblical influences, and the role of government authority.