Political philosophy Essay Example for Free

Political philosophy EssayAn English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlighten custodyt thinkers. Considered one of the first-year of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social ask surmise. His work had a great impact upon the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence. Lockes theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such as Hume, Rousseau and Kant. Locke was the first to draw the self through a continuity of consciousness. He postulated that the mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa. Contrary to pre-existing Cartesian philosophy, he maintain that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception. THOMAS HOBBESHobbes was a champion of absolutism for the self-governing but he also developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought the right of the individual the natural equality of all men the artificial character of the political order (which led to the later distinction between civil society and the state) the view that all legitimate political place must be representative and based on the consent of the people and a liberal interpretation of law which leaves people free to do whatsoever the law does not explicitly forbid. He was one of the founders of modern political philosophy.His understanding of humans as being matter and motion, obeying the same physical laws as other matter and motion, remains influential and his account of human nature as self-interested cooperation, and of political communities as being based upon a social contract remains one of the major topics of political philosophy. In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes also contributed to a diverse array of other fields, including history, geometry, the physics of gases, theology, ethics, and general philosophy.