RE: LOT (Little OT): Interesting Oracle related URL's.

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/l/locke.htm

• excerpt ---

   "Since it is the understanding that sets man above the rest of    sensible beings, and gives him all the advantage and dominion    which he has over them; it is certainly a subject, even for its    nobleness, worth our labour to inquire into. The understanding,    like the eye, while it makes us see and perceive all other things,    takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it    at a distance and make it its own object. But whatever be the    difficulties that lie in the way of this inquiry; whatever it be    that keeps us so much in the dark to ourselves; sure I am that all    the light we can let in upon our minds, all the acquaintance we    can make with our own understandings, will not only be very    pleasant, but bring us great advantage, in directing our thoughts    in the search of other things. "
    _Essay_, John Locke

excerpt:

...In Two Treatises of Government he has two purposes in view: to
refute the doctrine of the divine and absolute right of the Monarch, as it had been put forward by Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, and to establish a theory which would reconcile the liberty of the citizen with political order.
...

    Although there is little direct reference to Hobbes, Locke seems to have had Hobbes in mind when he argued that the doctrine of absolute monarchy leaves sovereign and subjects in the state of nature towards one another. The constructive doctrines which are elaborated in the second treatise became the basis of social and political philosophy for generations.

   ***Labor is the origin and justification of property***;

   contract or consent is the ground of government and fixes its limits. Behind both doctrines lies the idea of the independence of the individual person. The state of nature knows no government; but in it, as in political society, men are subject to the moral law, which is the law of God. Men are born free and equal in rights. Whatever a man "mixes his labour with" is his to use. Or, at least, this was so in the primitive condition of human life in which there was enough for all and "the whole earth was America." Locke sees that, when men have multiplied and land has become scarce, rules are needed beyond those which the moral law or law of nature supplies. But the origin of government is traced not to this economic necessity, but to another cause. The moral law is always valid, but it is not always kept. In the state of nature all men equally have the right to

   ***punish transgressors***:

civil society originates when, for the better administration of the law, men agree to delegate this function to certain officers. Thus

   ***government is instituted by a "social contract"***;

   its powers are limited, and they involve reciprocal obligations; moreover, they can be modified or rescinded by the authority which conferred them. Locke's theory is thus no more historical than Hobbes's. It is a rendering of the facts of constitutional government in terms of thought, and it served its purpose as a justification of the Revolution settlement in accordance with the ideas of the time.

...

   "The business of laws, is not to provide for the truth of     opinions, but for the safety and security of the commonwealth,     and of every particular man's goods and person. And so it ought     to be. For truth certainly would do well enough, if she were once     left to shift for herself. She seldom has received, and I fear     never will receive, much assistance from the power of great men,     to whom she is but rarely known, and more rarely welcome. She is     not taught by laws, nor has she any need of force, to procure her     entrance into the minds of men. Errors, indeed, prevail by the     assistance of foreign and borrowed succors. But if truth makes     not her way into the understanding by her own light, she will be     but the weaker for any borrowed force violence can add to her. "      _Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes_(?), John Locke

...

• end ---

more from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

  Property rights: http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/p/property.htm -
  Social contract: http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/s/soc-cont.htm

On 8 Jun 2001, at 9:40, Khedr, Waleed wrote:

> If any one is having a problem with that then I guess they want to be the > center of the universe and I'd suggest them to get help!

...

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