Political Science and a bit of Plato

Today's Philosophy lecture was based upon political science. Being honest, the lecture for me felt like an on going day of someone punching me constantly in the head, having cold sweats and having a tissue on me at all times! Ultimately, being ill and commuting to Uni is no fun at all, making the drive all the worse as sneezing whilst driving is pretty dangerous at the best of times. So on to some of the stuff i learnt and fingers crossed to showing I even slightly understand what I'm learning about.

Plato's Crito

Basically, some man called Socrates gets imprisoned and his buddy Crito tries to influence him to escape from prison. Socrates dismisses Crito's statement as he describes how he has a loyalty to his friends and family, feeling the need to face his sentence rather than escaping as Crito tells him to. Socrates describes how he has lived in the city of Athens for a long time and he has benefited from it through such things as education, therefore he must abide by the laws of the city and face his sentence. Essentially, Socrates is arguing Kantain's principles - what if everyone did that? If everyone began escaping from prison, what would happen then. 
This leads us on to the Social Contract. This was 'created' although it was never wrote down, it was merely a spoken agreement which said that without it there would ultimately be a collapse in society. This 'spoken agreement' was in the Leviathan who was a 'biblical monster of unstoppable power' dun dun dunnnnnn. The power of the Leviathan was limitless and this can then be related easily to the State of Nature.


Right, the state of nature, basically Hobbes stated in the state of nature there will be "no arts; no letters; no society and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, poor, nasty, brutish and short." The state is explicitly a war machine; organised for war against subjects who resist and organised for war against rival states. The Leviathan made a basic contract which in simple terms meant he will enable civilisation to happen and will stop any mayhem happening but wanted all the power. In the state of nature, peoples dominant passions are aggressive, people acting on their passions will produce a state of war, therefore people lived in fear.


Locke
Locke is a philosopher during the late 1600's who proposed the idea that God had given Adam the right to rule; "Let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air." - Genesis. Locke opposed Hobbes theory and his belief in the state of nature, he unlike Hobbes believed the state of nature was nice and that everyone should get on, not live in fear. Locke proposed a concept of government by consent and limited by law - its powers mainly used for the protection of property. He insisted that a need for a higher level (such as government, police etc) was needed to choose sides with arguments and so on. However, he stated that he thought the government should only rule if society agree. Pretty good theories if you ask me!
Locke believed that citizens could rebel if their government ceased to respect the law. It therefore meant that Locke was suggesting that the right of revolution was one of the natural rights of man. 


Rousseau
Rousseau believes that our freedom is to be guided by our own will. He wanted civil freedom and that if everyone is involved in making the law, they will only be following their own will. Essentially, he says that society makes us unhappy. Therefore he wants the state of nature back. So yeah, it is obviously right at this present moment in time I hardly know anything about Rousseau, he probably wasn't even THAT interesting anyway!


Simply all three philosophers where different and wanting different things;


Hobbes - A complete collapse of society
Locke - A collaborate state
Roussea - A state of freedom


Plato's Forms
Plato believed of a distinct perfect world/universe and his forms are represented in an imperfect way in our world. This idea is shown through Plato's cave analogy where prisoners were forced to stare at the side of the cave and the only world they ever knew was the world of shadows, one day one of the prisoners decided to turn around and saw the 'perfect world' and tried to influence the others to do so. Basically, he believed that everything we saw, such as my mac laptop now, is an imperfect version, that ultimately, there is a better mac in the real 'perfect world'. This can be related to Christianity and the way they believe there is a heaven which would be the ultimate perfect world. 
Plato also believed that the soul is organised into three parts;
1. Reason - Knows the forms, and therefore reality
2. Spirit  - Courage, ferocity, aggression - wants honour but does not know what honour is
3. Desire - Constant craving, pushed hopelessly from one desire to another


^ He believes we know of these forms before we were born.


Another one of his beliefs had to do with the Chariot, shown below;

The Charioteer = Reason
One Horse = Spirit/Aggression
The Other Horse = Desire


Plato argued that if there are 3 types of soul, then there are 3 types of state. The Mass are dominated by one of the horses that is desire, therefore that is why we need to be governed relating to Locke. 


Machiavelli
Machiavelli wrote the famous book, The Prince, which was written for the Medici rulers of Florance. He says to hold on to power you must learn how to not be good, therefore guided by being efficient. Basically, a ruler can do whatever to get power then to hold on to that power, relating to Leviathan.


So, I hope this information I can described during this long and winding blog is correct otherwise I have wasted over an hour writing up notes which are completely wrong. However, if this is so, I blame my illness so technically it is not my fault :)