What Justifies the State?: Right to Dissent, The
Philosopher John supports the people's right to dissent against tyrannical regimes. The major problem Locke attributes to the state of nature without government is the difficulty of protecting personal property. The kind..
What Justifies the State?: Social Contract Theory
Thomas Hobbes, 17th century philosopher, characterized life without government as a "war of all against all" in which life is "nasty, brutish, and short." People agree to form a government simply to protect themselves fr..
What is Art?: Representational Theory of Art, The
Intriguing works of art have one thing in common.They cannot be ignored. In ancient times, philosophers viewed art as representation, what they called mimesis. Plato saw art as an imitation of our world which itself is a..
What is Human Nature?: Biology's Challenge to Traditional Western View of Human Nature
In the 17th and 18th centuries, scientists are fascinated with collecting specimens and classifying species. However, It will be Charles Darwin who creates a new picture of nature. In the 1830s he travels to the Galapago..
What is Human Nature?: Critics of Greek and Christian Views of Human Nature
Greek and Christian ideas of human nature have posed problems. Feminists point out that women are seen as creatures of emotion or symbols of temptations of the flesh because of these historical perceptions. Other critics..
What is Human Nature?: Existentialism and Human Nature
The 20th century existentialist Jean-Paul Satre asserts that man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. There is no human nature because there is no God to have a conception of it. The bond among humans is t..
What is Human Nature?: How Language Makes Human Life Distinctive
If human nature is not different from the rest of the nature, then why is human existence so different? Language. Language allows humans to organize efforts that require social cooperation, book writing, and the passage ..
What is Human Nature?: Judao-Christian Tradition: Free Will, The
In the story of the Fall God punishes Adam and Eve for eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Those marks of punishment became known as original sin and are closely tied to another aspect of human nature, free will. In the C..
What is Human Nature?: Judao-Christian Tradition: Human Superiority Over Animals, The
The belief that humans are superior to animals is central to the Judeo-Christian tradition. As recorded in Genesis, God said, "Let us make man in our image...and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over ..
What is Human Nature?: Plato's View of Human Nature
In 4th century B.C.E. Athens the philosopher Plato tries to define the basic parts of human nature using the metaphor of a charioteer and his pair of winged horses. He believes that a human being is essentially a soul wi..