The core of Locke's philosophy is that empiricism is the source of all knowledge . You are right I oppose that, because better models for consciousness have come up, particularly in Being and Nothingness and Transcendence of the Ego by Jean-Paul Sartre.

If you're talking about social contract theory, I am more of a Rousseau guy, but Locke is commendable although a huge apologist for rampant classism in Europe. His solution to classism in was that there was enough land for everybody in the United States to have some. He also said that accumulation of wealth and property past your immediate needs was unnatural, along with money itself. This goes into the classic labor theory of value that Marx later borrowed.

Hume's apology for wealth inequality is even better...he said simply that people miss what they lose more than people miss what they don't have, which justified class social relations across Europe.

Hobbes has a lot to say about the social contract and natural law of our Forefathers but I'm willing to guess by your statement that you're not too familiar with it.

Just continue to speak in platitudes, use strawman arguments, and ignore the logic of the opposition.

This post was edited by Skinned on Jul 8 2014 07:58pm

I was talking about his concept of rights as natural and inalienable. Life liberty and property. But yes im sure there is a whole plethora of core principles of his you reject.
He argued that government should be there to protect those three things and should be overthrown if it fails to do so.
Our country was founded on these same ideals which you apparently abhor or deny even after swearing an oath to uphold it. (if i recall correctly)

Across various threads you have a failure to identify actual acts of coercion and support various schemes of oppression while claiming you are supporting "rights" which are actually state privileges necessarily at the expense of others.

I directly addressed and refuted your argument that coercion was the basis of rights and you didn't respond to a single bit of it and instead posed a single sentence insinuating that a moral right to life and liberty is fictitious.
Coercion is not (always) necessary to live free. We do not need special permission from a kenyan or a pantsuit to be justly alive and free, nor does it necessarily conflict with or coerce others.
If you're born on an island by yourself you are not coercing others if you live free there.
As i've been saying coercion is only explicitly necessary for your positive rights that necessarily require initiating force against others to institute.

I very highly doubt our moral codes are that different..I probably just view the entire subject in a different light.
Where did I ever say any of those are morally acceptable? I didn't say that.
I'm not really speaking anything about that.

What entitles you to it?

This post was edited by Tylr on Jul 8 2014 09:02pm

What you are saying would make sense if it was said before The Origin of the Species was written.



I disagree with him that the source of our rights are magical. He lived during the life of essentialism. Philosophical essentialism has been a dead idea for awhile now.

That is what makes Rawls so important to liberalism.



Yes, we are the intellectual and spiritual descendents of Locke, Montesquieu, and the like.

This post was edited by Skinned on Jul 8 2014 09:19pm

I laughed when the bigots claimed that Muslims never found liberalism. The Ottomans had religious tolerance LONG before Europe/America had it.

We've always had right, it will continue to exist in its purest form, with or without man.

One of our greatest Americans right there.

Didn't know he caused the great depression that started before he even became president