WENDELL
G. WISCO
Abstract
This paper delves into the purpose
of government through the philosophies of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and
Thomas Hobbes and the realities of the Philippine Government. Rousseau espouses that by joining together into civil
society through the social contract and abandoning their claims of natural
rights, individuals can both preserve themselves and remain free. This is
because submission to the authority of the general will of the people as a whole guarantees individuals
against being subordinated to the wills of others and also ensures that they
obey themselves because they are, collectively, the authors of the law. On the
other hand, Hobbes believes that the best we can hope for is
peaceful life under an authoritarian-sounding sovereign. A “sovereign”
authority that is totally unaccountable to its subjects.
These two philosophies are in
unison to some degree because Rousseau promotes socialism and communism while
Hobbes advocates an authoritarian sovereign. On the contrary, the Philippine
government embraces democracy.
Keywords: government,
society, sovereign, authority
Introduction
Rousseau
claimed that the state of nature was a primitive condition without law or
morality, which human beings left for the benefits and necessity of
cooperation. As society developed, division of labour and private property
required the human race to adopt institutions of law. In the degenerate phase
of society, man is prone to be in frequent competition with his fellow men
while also becoming increasingly dependent on them. This double pressure
threatens both his survival and his freedom
By
joining together into civil society through the social contract and abandoning
their claims of natural rights, individuals can both preserve themselves and
remain free. This is because submission to the authority of the general will of the people as a whole guarantees individuals
against being subordinated to the wills of others and also ensures that they
obey themselves because they are, collectively, the authors of the law. Although
Rousseau argues that sovereignty (or the power to make the laws) should be in
the hands of the people, he also makes a sharp distinction between the
sovereign and the government (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau).
Hobbes
characterized men as equal; in the faculties of mind and body; in achieving
goals; and in the exercise of man’s natural right to self-preservation (http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/hobbes/themes)
Societies
according to Hobbes are created by men from their conscious desire to become part
of a society. For Hobbes, Man is not naturally sociable; otherwise, men will not
enter into an agreement to get out of the so-called “state of nature” which was
explained by Hobbes in “Social Contract Theory”. Reason is distinctive to men
in general as pointed out by Hobbes. Further, he opposed man being God
seekers as envisioned by Christian philosophers. Man according to Hobbes is a
power seeker that supports the Machiavellian theory that man is a creature ruled by
self-interest.
The
political theory of Hobbes can be viewed on a theory of human nature. Hobbes
stressed that the equality of men in capacities, desires and goals and in
the exercise of his natural right to self-preservation can lead to conflict.
Since man by nature is in endless pursuit of power to protect himself, man is
bound to dominate other man. As a consequence, this may lead to a condition of
war because man as a rational being could reason that the only way to dominate
other man is when he ceases to desire power. However, the same reason would
create the realization that man to preserve his life should get out in the
condition of war (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_nature).
The Government of the Philippines, also known as the Philippine National Government is
the national government of
the unitary state of the Republic of the
Philippines. It is a presidential, representative, and
democratic republic where the President of the
Philippines is both the head of state and
the head of government within
a pluriform multi-party system. The government
has three interdependent branches: the legislative branch, the executive
branch, and the judicial branch. The powers of the branches are vested by
the Constitution of the Philippines in the
following: Legislative power is vested in the
two-chamber Congress of the
Philippines—the Senate is the
upper chamber and the House of Representatives is the
lower chamber. Executive power is
exercised by the government under the leadership of the
President. Judicial power is vested in the courts with
the Supreme Court of the Philippines as the
highest judicial body (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_thePhilippines).
The
Life and Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.”
-
Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a
political philosopher and Freemason who was born in the
independent Calvinist city-state of Geneva on June 28, 1712, the son of Isaac
Rousseau, a watchmaker, and Suzanne Bernard. When Rousseau was 10 his father
fled from Geneva to avoid imprisonment for a minor offence, leaving young
Jean-Jacques to be raised by an aunt and uncle. Rousseau left Geneva at 16,
wandering from place to place, before finally moving to Paris in 1742 (http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jun/rousseau.html).
Rousseau's
profound insight can be found in almost every trace of modern philosophy today.
Somewhat complicated and ambiguous, Rousseau's general philosophy tried to
grasp an emotional and passionate side of man which he felt was left out of
most previous philosophical thinking.
In his
early writing, Rousseau contended that man is essentially good when in the
"state of nature" (the state of all the other animals and the
condition man was in before the creation of civilization and society), and that
good people are made unhappy and corrupted by their experiences in society. He
viewed society as "artificial" and "corrupt" and that the
furthering of society results in the continuing unhappiness of man (http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jun/rousseau.html).
As
a brilliant, undisciplined, and unconventional thinker, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
spent most of his life being driven by controversy back and forth between Paris
and his native Geneva. Rousseau sired but refused to support several
illegitimate children and frequently initiated bitter quarrels with even the
most supportive of his colleagues. Rousseau first attracted widespread
attention in 1750 with his prize-winning essay Discourssur les Sciences et
les Arts (Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts), in
which he decried the harmful effects of modern civilization (http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/rous.htm).
Rousseau
argued the pursuit of the arts and sciences had not been beneficial to mankind,
it merely promoted idleness, and the resulting political inequality
encouraged alienation. He concluded that material progress had actually
undermined the possibility of sincere friendship, replacing it with jealousy,
fear and suspicion. He proposed that the progress of knowledge had made
governments more powerful, and crushed individual liberty (http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jun/rousseau.html).
When he moved back to Geneva
in 1754 he reconverted to Calvinism from his previous conversion to Catholicism
and began his work on Discourse
on the Origin of Inequality, and later in 1762 began work on The Social Contract. The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality was
written in 1754 by Rousseau in response to the question, “What is the origin of
inequality among men, and is it authorized by natural law?” Rousseau responds by claiming that the two main inequalities are natural inequality, differences in
physical being, and the much more harmful moral inequality which creates
differences in power and wealth. He claims that civil society is based upon
moral inequalities. He also claims that the natural man’s only care is self-preservation,
there is no fear, anxiety, or jealousy as opposed to Hobbes’ opinion on the natural man. When a natural man is introduced into a society, emotions such as
competition, self-comparison, hatred, and urge for power emerge. “Property is
the beginning of evil,” claims Rousseau, yet at the same time he realizes that
property is going to stay and as a result it needs to be protected. This is
where civil society becomes necessary.
The
Social Contract became one of Rousseau's most famous
works. In this book, Rousseau states the idea that everyone is born free into
a state of nature which is very primitive. This state is better left for the
benefits of morality, necessity, and cooperation. For matters of private
property and competition, a law must be made. These benefits can be given by
joining a social contract and giving up natural rights for the greater good of the general will. Rousseau stresses direct democracy in an assembly similar to a
city-state in which only the people can control legislation. The main idea of
his Social Contract is to give up personal natural rights to living in a state of
nature for civil society with rights for the greater good specifically the
right of private property (http://apgovernmentchs.wikispaces.com/Locke,%20Hobbes,%20and%20Rosseau).
The Social
Contract describes the relationship of man with
society. Contrary to his earlier work, Rousseau claimed that the state of
nature is a brutish condition without law or morality and that there are good
men only as a result of society's presence. In the state of nature, man is
prone to be in frequent competition with his fellow men. Because he can be more
successful in facing threats by joining with other men, he has the impetus to do
so. He joins together with his fellow men to form the collective human presence
known as "society." The Social Contract is the "compact"
agreed to among men that sets the conditions for membership in society (http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jun/rousseau.html)
Up to
this day, Jean-Jacques Rousseau remains an important figure in the history of
philosophy, both because of his contributions to political philosophy and moral
psychology and because of his influence on later thinkers. Rousseau's own view
of philosophy and philosophers was firmly negative, seeing philosophers as the
post-hoc rationalizers of self-interest, as apologists for various forms of
tyranny, and as playing a role in the alienation of the modern individual from
humanity's natural impulse to compassion. The concern that dominates Rousseau's
work is to find a way of preserving human freedom in a world where human beings
are increasingly dependent on one another for the satisfaction of their needs.
This concern has two dimensions: material and psychological, of which the
latter has greater importance. In the modern world, human beings come to derive
their very sense of self from the opinion of others, a fact which Rousseau sees
as corrosive of freedom and destructive of individual authenticity. He principally
explores two routes to achieving and protecting freedom: the first is a
political one aimed at constructing political institutions that allow for the
co-existence of free and equal citizens in a community where they themselves
are sovereign; the second is a project for child development and education that
fosters autonomy and avoids the development of the most destructive forms of
self-interest. However, though Rousseau believes the co-existence of human
beings in relations of equality and freedom is possible, he is consistently and
overwhelmingly pessimistic that humanity will escape from a dystopia of alienation,
oppression, and unfreedom (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rousseau/)
Rousseau’s
final years were largely spent in deliberate withdrawal. He suffered a
haemorrhage and died at age 66 while taking a morning walk on the estate of the
Marquis René Louis de Girardin at Ermenonville,
28 miles northeast of Paris (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau).
The
Life and Works of Thomas Hobbes
“It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a
law.”
-
Hobbes
Thomas
Hobbes was born on 5 April 1588 on his hometown of Malmesbury, which is in
Wiltshire, England. Hobbes left Malmesbury (in 1602 or 1603), in order to study
at Magdalen Hall, Oxford. After graduating from Oxford in February 1608, Hobbes
went to work for the Cavendish family, initially as a tutor to William
Cavendish, who later became the second earl of Devonshire. Hobbes would work
for the same family for most of the rest of his life. His work for the Cavendish
family is part of what allowed Hobbes to think and write as he did: it gave him
access to books and connections to other philosophers and scientists (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes/).
Hobbes's
current reputation rests largely on his political philosophy, was a thinker
with wide-ranging interests. In philosophy, he defended a range of materialist,
nominalist, and empiricist views against Cartesian and Aristotelian
alternatives. In physics, his work was influential on Leibniz, and led him into
disputes with Boyle and the experimentalists of the early Royal Society. In
history, he translated Thucydides' History
of the Peloponnesian War into English, and later wrote his own
history of the Long Parliament. In mathematics, he was less successful and is
best remembered for his repeated unsuccessful attempts to square the circle.
But despite that, Hobbes was a serious and prominent participant in the
intellectual life of his time (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes/)
Hobbes
first made a notable impact with philosophical writings in the early 1640s.
These included his Elements of
Law and De Cive. The Elements of Law, which Hobbes
circulated in 1640, is the first work in which Hobbes follows his typical
systematic pattern of starting with the workings of the mind and language and
developing the discussion towards political matters. De Cive (1642) was Hobbes's
first published book of political philosophy. This work focuses more narrowly
on the political: its three main sections are titled “Liberty”, “Empire” and
“Religion”. However, De Cive was
conceived as part of a larger work, the Elements of Philosophy. That work eventually had three
parts: De Corpore (1655), De Homine (1658), and De Cive itself. De Corporecovers issues of logic,
language, method, metaphysics, mathematics, and physics. De Homine, meanwhile, focuses on
matters of physiology and optics.
Late in
his time in France, Hobbes wrote Leviathan,
which was published in 1651.The Leviathan is
the most complete expression of Hobbes' philosophy. It begins with a
clearly materialistic account of human nature and knowledge, a
rigidly deterministic account of human
volition, and a pessimistic vision of the
consequently natural state of human beings in perpetual struggle against each
other. It is to escape this grim fate, Hobbes argued, that we form the commonwealth, surrendering our individual powers to the authority
of an absolute sovereign. For Hobbes, then, individual obedience to even an
arbitrary government is necessary in order to forestall the greater evil of an
endless state of war (http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/hobb.htm).
In
the introduction to the book Leviathan, Hobbes describes the state as an
organism, showing how each part of the state functions similarly to parts of a
human body. As the state is created by human beings, he first sets out to
describe human nature. He advises that we may look into ourselves to see a
picture of general humanity. He believes that all acts are ultimately
self-serving, even when they seem benevolent, and that in a state of nature,
prior to any formation of government, humans would behave completely selfish.
He remarks that all humans are essentially mentally and physically equal, and
because of this, we are naturally prone to fight each other. He cites three
natural reasons that humans fight: competition over material good, general
distrust, and the glory of powerful positions. Hobbes comes to the conclusion
that humanity's natural condition is a state of perpetual war, constant fear,
and lack of morality. He stated that morality consists of Laws of Nature.
These Laws, arrived at through social contract, are found out by reason and are
aimed to preserve human life (http://www.studymode.com/essays/Thomas-Hobbes-125659.html?topic).
Hobbes
called for an all-powerful sovereign (the "Leviathan") who would
serve the interests of the larger political community (i.e. England) by holding
it tightly together under his sovereign authority—to curb the kind of
human wantonness experienced in the Wars of Religion. For Hobbes, such powerful
rule was not to be founded on the ancient rule of "divine rights" of
monarchs—but based on the needs, even rights of the community to be
served by such an all-powerful ruler. In justifying this utilitarian approach to
state-building, he used "natural" theory or logic rather than
scripture or tradition, putting forth the first efforts to establish a modern
"political science" (http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/hobbes/
hobbes_life.html).
After his
return to England in 1651, Hobbes continued to publish philosophical works for
several years. De Corpore was
published in 1655, and provides Hobbes's main statements on several topics,
such as method and the workings of language. De Homine was published in 1658, completing the plan of
the Elements of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes/).
Hobbes
is also famous for his elaborate development of what has come to be known as
“social contract theory”, the method of justifying political principles or
arrangements by appeal to the agreement that would be made among suitably
situated rational, free, and equal persons. He is infamous for having used the
social contract method to arrive at the astonishing conclusion that we ought to
submit to the authority of an absolute—undivided and unlimited—sovereign power.
While his methodological innovation had a profound constructive impact on
subsequent work in political philosophy, his substantive conclusions have
served mostly as a foil for the development of more palatable philosophical
positions. Hobbes's moral philosophy has been less influential than his political
philosophy, in part because that theory is too ambiguous to have garnered any
general consensus as to its content. Most scholars have taken Hobbes to have
affirmed some sort of personal relativism or subjectivism; but views that
Hobbes espoused divine command theory, virtue ethics, rule egoism, or a form of
projectivism also find support in Hobbes's texts and among scholars. Because
Hobbes held that “the true doctrine of the Laws of Nature is the true Moral
Philosophy”, differences in interpretation of Hobbes's moral philosophy can be
traced to differing understandings of the status and operation of Hobbes' “laws
of nature”. The formerly dominant view that Hobbes espoused psychological
egoism as the foundation of his moral theory is currently widely rejected, and
there has been to date no fully systematic study of Hobbes's moral psychology (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-moral/)
His
attack in Leviathan on
the academic credentials at Oxford brought a sharp rebuttal from several
mathematics professors there, which then Hobbes answered in an appendix to a
published English translation of De
Corpore. This debate degenerated into an attack by Hobbes on Robert
Boyle and the group then in the process of forming the Royal Society—an
institution dedicated to promoting empirical research, a stepping away from the
deductive methods employed by Hobbes and the continental Rationalists. This
debate got personal and public—in several publications that carried the
argument back and forth, especially with his nemesis John Wallis. Wallis at one
point even accused Hobbes of disloyalty to the king but King Charles was still
well-disposed to his former tutor—though many in the royalist ranks were not,
especially over Hobbes' "atheism", demonstrated by his attacks on the
church in his Leviathan.
By the mid-1660 both the Great Fire of London and outbreaks of the plague in
England stirred the superstitions of the day—and led the government to be
vigilant in ferreting out heresies that might be responsible for bringing the
wrath of God on English society. Hobbes thus came under scrutiny for
heresy
Though the heresy furore eventually
abated, Hobbes was barred from printing any more of his writings on social
issues. Though Hobbes had promised his protector Charles II to not stir up
further controversy, the publication in 1679 of Behemoth: The History of the Causes of the Civil Wars of England,
put Hobbes in jeopardy. His death that same year at age 90 spared him from
the wrath of the royalist party (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/hobbes/hobbesbio.htm)
In
October 1679, Hobbes suffered a bladder disorder, which was followed by a
paralytic stroke from which he died on 4 December 1679. He is said to have
uttered the last words "A great leap in the dark" in his final
moments of life. He was interred within St. John the Baptist Church
in Ault Hucknall in Derbyshire, England.
Views on Government by Rousseau and Hobbes
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rousseau
was one of the first modern writers to seriously attack the institution of
private property, and therefore is considered a forebear of modern socialism
and communism Rousseau also questioned the assumption that the will of the
majority is always correct. He argued that the goal of government should be to
secure freedom, equality, and justice for all within the state, regardless of
the will of the majority (http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jun/rousseau.html)
In The Social Contract, Rousseau outlines the basis for a legitimate
political order within a framework of classical
republicanism. Published in 1762, it became one of the most
influential works of political philosophy in the Western tradition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau).
Every free action has two causes which concur to produce
it; one of them is the will that determines the act, and the other is the power that
performs it. In the political body, one must distinguish between these two - the
legislative power and the executive power. The executive power cannot belong to
the sovereign, since executive acts are particular acts, aimed at
individuals, and therefore, as already explained, outside the sovereign's
sphere. Public force, then, requires an agent to apply it according to the
direction of the general will.
This is the government,
erroneously confounded with the sovereign, of which it is only the minister. It
is an intermediary body established between subjects and sovereigns for their
mutual correspondence, for the execution of the laws and the maintenance of
civil and political liberty.
The magistrates who form the government
may be numerous, or may be few; and, generally speaking, the fewer the
magistrates the stronger the government. A magistrate has three wills--his
personal will, his will as one of the governors and his will as a member of the
sovereign. The last-named is the weakest, the first-named the most powerful.
If there is only one governor, the two stronger wills are
concentrated in one man; with a few governors, they are concentrated in few
men; when the government is in the hands of all the citizens, the second will
be obliterated and the first widely distributed, and the government is
consequently weak.
On the other hand, where there are many governors the
government will be more readily kept in correspondence with the general will. The legislator has to hit the happy medium at which the government,
while not failing in strength, is yet properly submissive to the
sovereign.
The sovereign may, in the first place, entrust the
government to the whole people or the greater part of them; this form is called
democracy. Or it may be placed in the hands of a minority, in which case it is
called aristocracy. Or it may be concentrated in the hands of a single
magistrate from whom all the others derive their power; this is called
monarchy.
It may be urged, on behalf of
democracy, that those who make the laws know better than anybody how they
should be interpreted and administered. But it is not right that the makers of
the laws should execute them, nor that the main body of the people should turn
its attention from general views to particular objects. Nothing is more
dangerous than the influence of private interests on public affairs. A true
democracy, in the vigorous sense of the term, never has existed, and never
will. It is against nature that the many should govern and the few be governed.
A people composed of gods would govern itself democratically (http://www.publicbookshelf.com/public_html/Outline_of_Great_Books_Volume_I/socialconbhc.html).
Rousseau claimed that the state of
nature was a primitive condition without law or morality, which human beings
left for the benefits and necessity of cooperation. As society developed,
division of labour and private property required the human race to adopt
institutions of law. In the degenerate phase of society, man is prone to be in
frequent competition with his fellow men while also becoming increasingly
dependent on them. This double pressure threatens both his survival and his
freedom.
According
to Rousseau, by joining together into civil society through the social contract
and abandoning their claims of natural rights, individuals can both preserve themselves
and remain free. This is because submission to the authority of the general will of the people as a whole guarantees individuals
against being subordinated to the wills of others and also ensures that they
obey themselves because they are, collectively, the authors of the law.
Although
Rousseau argues that sovereignty (or the power to make the laws) should be in
the hands of the people, he also makes a sharp distinction between the
sovereign and the government. The government is composed of magistrates,
charged with implementing and enforcing the general will. The
"sovereign" is the rule of law, ideally decided on by direct democracy in an assembly.
Rousseau
opposed the idea that the people should exercise sovereignty via a representative
assembly. He approved the kind of republican
government of the city-state, for which Geneva provided a model - or would have
done if renewed on Rousseau's principles. Much subsequent controversy about
Rousseau's work has hinged on disagreements concerning his claims that citizens
constrained to obey the general will are thereby rendered free (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau).
The
notion of the general will is wholly central to Rousseau's theory of political
legitimacy. It is, however, an unfortunately obscure and controversial notion.
Some commentators see it as no more than the dictatorship of the proletariat or
the tyranny of the urban poor (such as may perhaps be seen in the French
Revolution). Such was not Rousseau's meaning. This is clear from the Discourse on Political Economy, where
Rousseau emphasizes that the general will exists to protect individuals against
the masses, not to require them to be sacrificed to it. He is, of course, sharply
aware that men have selfish and sectional interests which will lead them to try
to oppress others. It is for this reason that loyalty to the good of all must
be a supreme (although not exclusive) commitment by everyone, not only if a
truly general will is to be heeded but also if it is to be formulated successfully
in the first place (Edward Craig, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Volume Eight, p. 371).
Thomas Hobbes
Hobbes
is the founding father of modern political philosophy. Directly or indirectly, he has set the terms of
debate about the fundamentals of political life right into our own times. The
problems of political life mean that a society should accept an unaccountable
sovereign as its sole political authority. Nonetheless, we still live in the
world that Hobbes addressed head-on: a world where human authority is something
that requires justification and is automatically accepted by few; a world
where social and political inequality also appears questionable; and a world
where religious authority faces significant dispute (http://www.iep.utm.edu/hobmoral/).
Thomas Hobbes sees humans from a
mechanistic view that life is simply the motions of the organism and believes that
a state of nature in humankind will eventually become a state of war of all
against all. He attempted to justify the absolute power of the sovereign based on a hypothetical social contract in which individuals seek to protect
themselves from one another by agreeing to obey the sovereign in all matters.
The key element in Hobbes’s view on human nature was the importance of desires.
He believes Law is the regulation over humankind’s essential selfishness. In
Thomas Hobbes’s perspective, positive law is the idea that law and humankind`s
natural rights come from the state. Human action can be explained in purely
mechanical terms, and human beings are governed by passion (http://www.studymode.com/essays/Thomas-Hobbes-Biography-And-View-On-175796.html).
Hobbes
asserted that a man in a state of nature, without government, has
self-preservation as their primary objective and will do anything to further
their own survival, no matter the cost to others.
Hobbes felt that the role of the
state was very limited. He advocated for a government, run at the consent of
the governed, whose only responsibilities were the protection of the people,
protection from foreign enemies, and to provide police to ensure domestic
tranquillity. He believed in the power or a single sovereign who had unlimited
power in order to maintain the peace, but who offered the most independence for
individuals possible. The people, according to Hobbes, do not have a right to
rebel against the government, because without the government, men will go back
into a state of nature, ensuring their destruction
(http://apgovernmentchs.wikispaces.com/Locke,%20Hobbes,%20and%20Rosseau).
Hobbes
sought to discover rational principles for the construction of a civil polity
that would not be subject to destruction from within. He came to the view that
the burdens of even the most oppressive government are “scarcely sensible, in
respect of the miseries, and horrible calamity that accompany a civil war.
Because virtually any government would be better than a civil war, and,
according to Hobbes's analysis, all but absolute governments are systematically
prone to dissolution into civil war, people ought to submit themselves to absolute political authority. Continued stability will require that they also
refrain from the sorts of actions that might undermine such a regime. For
example, subjects should not dispute the sovereign power and under no circumstances
should they rebel. In general, Hobbes aimed to demonstrate the reciprocal
relationship between political obedience and peace.
To
establish these conclusions, Hobbes summons us to consider what life would be
like in a state of nature, that is, a condition without government. Perhaps we
would imagine that people might fare best in such a state, where each decides
for herself how to act, and is judge, jury and executioner in her own case
whenever disputes arise—and that at any rate, this state is the appropriate
baseline against which to judge the justifiability of political arrangements.
Hobbes terms this situation “the condition of mere nature”, a state of
perfectly private judgment, in which there is no agency with recognized
authority to arbitrate disputes and effective power to enforce its decisions.
When
people mutually covenant with each to other to obey a common authority, they
have established what Hobbes calls “sovereignty by institution”. When threatened by a conqueror, they covenant for protection by promising obedience,
they have established “sovereignty by acquisition”. These are equally
legitimate ways of establishing sovereignty, according to Hobbes, and their
underlying motivation is the same—namely fear—whether of one's fellows or of a
conqueror. The social covenant involves both the renunciation or transfer of
rights and the authorization of the sovereign power. Political legitimacy
depends not on how a government came to power but only on whether it can
effectively protect those who have consented to obey it; political obligation
ends when protection ceases.
Although
Hobbes offered some mild pragmatic grounds for preferring monarchy to other
forms of government, his main concern was to argue that effective
government—whatever its form—must have absolute authority. Its powers must be
neither divided nor limited. The powers of legislation, adjudication,
enforcement, taxation, war-making (and the less familiar right of control of
normative doctrine) are connected in such a way that a loss of one may thwart the effective exercise of the rest; for example, legislation without interpretation
and enforcement will not serve to regulate conduct. Only a government that
possesses all of what Hobbes terms the “essential rights of sovereignty” can be
reliably effective, since partial sets of these rights are held by different bodies
that disagree in their judgments as to what is to be done, paralysis of
effective government, or degeneration into a civil war to settle their dispute,
may occur.
While
Hobbes insists that we should regard our governments as having absolute
authority, he reserves to subjects the liberty of disobeying some of their
government's commands. He argues that subjects retain a right of self-defence
against the sovereign power, giving them the right to disobey or resist when
their lives are in danger. He also gives them seemingly broad resistance rights
in cases in which their families or even their honour are at stake. Moreover, if
the sovereign's failure to provide adequate protection to subjects extinguishes
their obligation to obey, and if it is left to each subject to judge for
herself the adequacy of that protection, it seems that people have never really
exited the fearsome state of nature (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-moral/).
Philippine
Government’s Reality
Constitutional Framework
The
Philippines has a long history of democratic constitutional development. The
Malolos Constitution of 1898-99 reflected the aspirations of educated Filipinos
to create a polity as enlightened as any in the world. That first constitution
was modelled on those of France, Belgium, and some of the South American
republics. Powers were divided, but the legislature was supreme. A bill of
rights guaranteed individual liberties. The church was separated from the
state, but this provision was included only after a long debate and passed only
by a single vote. The Malolos Constitution was in effect only briefly; United
States troops soon installed a colonial government, which remained in effect
until the establishment of the Philippine Commonwealth in 1935.
The
1935 constitution, drawn up under the terms of the Tydings-McDuffie Act, which
created the Philippine Commonwealth, also served as a basis for an independent
Philippine government from 1946 until 1973. The framers of the Commonwealth
Constitution were not completely free to choose any type of government they
wanted, since their work had to be approved by United States President Franklin
D. Roosevelt, but as many were legal scholars familiar with American
constitutional law, they produced a document strongly modelled on the United
States Constitution. The 1935 constitution differed from the United States
document in only two important respects: Government was unitary rather than
federal, local governments were subject to general supervision by the
president, and the president could declare an emergency and temporarily
exercise near-dictatorial power. This latter provision was used by Marcos after
September 1972, when he declared martial law.
The
1935 constitution seemed to serve the nation well. It gave the Philippines
twenty-six years of stable, constitutional government during a period when a
number of other Asian states were succumbing to military dictatorship or
communist revolution. By the late 1960s, however, many Filipinos came to
believe that the constitution only provided a democratic political cloak for a
profoundly oligarchic society. A constitutional convention was called to
rewrite the basic law of the land.
The
delegates selected to rewrite the constitution hoped to retain its democratic
essence while deleting parts deemed to be unsuitable relics of the colonial
past. They hoped to produce a genuinely Filipino document. But before their
work could be completed, Marcos declared martial law and manipulated the
constitutional convention to serve his purposes. The 1973 constitution was a
deviation from the Philippines' commitment to democratic ideals. Marcos
abolished Congress and ruled by presidential decree from September 1972 until
1978, when a parliamentary government with a legislature called the National
Assembly replaced the presidential system. But Marcos exercised all the powers
of the president under the old system plus the powers of the prime minister under the
new system. When Marcos was driven from office in 1986, the 1973 constitution
also was jettisoned.
After
Aquino came to power, on March 25, 1986, she issued Presidential Proclamation
No. 3, which promulgated an interim "Freedom Constitution" that gave
Aquino sweeping powers theoretically even greater than those Marcos had
enjoyed, although she promised to use her emergency powers only to restore
democracy, not to perpetuate herself in power. She claimed that she needed a
free hand to restore democracy, revive the economy, gain control of the
military, and repatriate some of the national wealth that Marcos and his
partners had purloined. Minister of Justice Neptali Gonzales described the
Freedom Constitution as "civilian in character, revolutionary in origin,
democratic in essence, and transitory in character." The Freedom
Constitution was to remain in effect until a new legislature was convened and a
constitutional convention could write a new, democratic constitution to be
ratified by national plebiscite.
Although
many Filipinos thought delegates to the Constitutional Commission should be
elected, Aquino appointed them, saying that the Philippines could not afford
the time or expense of an election. On May 25, 1986, she selected forty-four
names from hundreds suggested by her cabinet and the public. She appointed
respected, prominent citizens and, to be on the safe side, prohibited them from
running for office for one year after the constitution's ratification.
Delegates had the same profile as those who had drawn up the constitutions of
1898 and 1935: they were wealthy and well educated. They represented a range of
political stances: some were leftists and some were ardent nationalists, but
moderate conservatives held a majority.
The
constitution, one of the longest in the world, establishes three separate
branches of government called departments: executive, legislative, and
judicial. A number of independent commissions are mandated: the Commission on
Elections and the Commission on Audit are continued from the old constitution,
and two others, the Commission on Human Rights and the Commission on Good
Government, were formed in reaction to Marcos's abuses. The Commission on Good
Government is charged with the task of repossessing ill-gotten wealth acquired
during the Marcos regime.
The church and state are separated, but
Catholic influence can be seen in parts of the Constitution. An article on the
family downplays birth control; another clause directs the state to protect the
life of the unborn beginning with conception; and still another clause abolishes the death penalty. Church-owned land
also is tax-exempt.
The
explosive issue of agrarian reform is treated gingerly. The state is explicitly
directed to undertake the redistribution of land to those who till it, but
"just compensation" must be paid to present owners, and Congress
(expected to be dominated by landowners) is given the power to prescribe limits
on the amount of land that can be retained. To resolve the controversial issue
of United States military bases, the Constitution requires that any future
agreement must be in the form of a treaty that is ratified by two-thirds of the
Senate and, if the Congress requires, ratified by a majority of the votes cast
in a national referendum.
Many
provisions lend a progressive spirit to the Constitution, but these provisions
are symbolic declarations of the framers' hopes and are unenforceable. For
example, the state is to make decent housing available to underprivileged
citizens. Priority is to be given to the sick, elderly, disabled, women, and
children. Wealth and political power are to be diffused for the common good.
The state shall maintain honesty and integrity in the public service. To be
implemented, all of these declarations of intent required legislation
Aquino
scheduled a plebiscite on the new constitution for February 2, 1987. The
plebiscite was fairly conducted and orderly. An overwhelming three-to-one vote
approved of the Constitution, confirmed Aquino in office until 1992, and dealt
a stunning defeat to her critics. Above all else the victory indicated a vote
for stability in the midst of turmoil. There was only one ominous note--a
majority of the military voted against the referendum. Aquino proclaimed the
new Constitution in effect on February 11, 1987, and made all members of the
military swear loyalty to it (http://countrystudies.us/philippines/79.htm).
Politics
In
1991 Philippine politics resembled nothing so much as the "good old
days" of the pre-martial law period--wide-open, sometimes irresponsible,
but undeniably free. Pre-martial law politics, however, essentially were a
distraction from the nation's serious problems. The parties were completely non-ideological.
Therefore, politicians and officeholders switched parties whenever it seemed
advantageous to do so. Almost all politicians were wealthy, and many were
landlords with large holdings. They blocked moves for social reform; indeed,
they seemed not to have even imagined that society required serious reform.
Congress acquired a reputation for corruption that made the few honest members
stand out. When Marcos closed down Congress in 1972, hardly anyone was disappointed
except the members themselves.
The
February 1986 People's Power Revolution, also called the EDSA Revolution had
restored all the prerequisites of democratic politics: freedom of speech and
press, civil liberties, regularly scheduled elections for genuine legislatures,
plebiscites, and ways to ensure honest ballot counting. But by 1991 the return
to irrelevant politics had caused a sense of hopelessness to creep back into the
nation; where five years before had been riding the euphoric crest of a non-violent
democratic revolution. In 1986 it seemed that democracy would have one last
chance to solve the Philippines' deep-rooted social and economic problems.
Within five years, it seems to many observers that the net result of democracy
was to put the country back where it had been before Marcos: a democratic
political system disguising an oligarchic society (http://countrystudies.us/philippines/82.htm).
Conclusion
The Social Contract, arguably Rousseau's most important work, outlines
the basis for a legitimate political order within a framework of classical
republicanism. The
government is composed of magistrates, charged with implementing and enforcing
the general will. The "sovereign" is the rule of law, ideally decided
on by direct democracy in an assembly.
The
notion of the general will is wholly central to Rousseau's theory of political
legitimacy.It is, however, an unfortunately obscure and controversial notion.
Some commentators see it as no more than the dictatorship of the proletariat or
the tyranny of the urban poor. Such was not Rousseau's meaning. This is clear
from the Discourse on Political
Economy, where Rousseau emphasizes that the general will exists to
protect individuals against the masses, not to require them to be sacrificed to
it. He is, of course, sharply aware that men have selfish and sectional
interests which will lead them to try to oppress others. It is for this reason
that loyalty to the good of all alike must be a supreme (although not
exclusive) commitment by everyone, not only if a truly general will is to be
heeded but also if it is to be formulated successfully in the first place
Hobbes
believes that the government can guarantee that people will not harm one
another, instead, they would be able to rely on one another to keep their
agreements. In establishing a government, people give up some of their personal
freedom and give the government the authority to enforce laws and
agreements. According to Social Contract Theory, “the state exists
to enforce the rules necessary for social living, while morality consists in
the whole set of rules that facilitate social living”. Thus, the government is needed
to enforce the basic rules of social living
The
aim of the social contract is to create social order, ending the state of nature
and making it possible for people to cooperate and produce social goods. For the contract to best achieve its aims, everyone must become part of the contract. Looking at it in the present dimension, Hobbes's
explanation of the contract is best seen in the way we live our lives. The basics
that most of us are enjoying under the contract are prohibitions against
murder, assault, theft, etc. which are being imposed by the police force. The
army on the other hand protects society from outside threats. Our civil
rights are also protected through the criminal justice system. Freedom of
Speech, freedom of religion freedom from arbitrary discrimination and the
protection of the environment are among the basic things necessary for the
survival of the society that are being protected under the social
contract.
Hobbes
believes that the best state is one led by a single sovereign whose power must
be unrestricted with all three branches of government devolving to him, a
single sovereign who has absolute power and cannot be replaced by the
people.
The
Philippine government is still beset with a myriad of problems because it is
still a relatively young democracy. Criticism of the government from all parts
of the political spectrum is very prevalent. Filipino communists refused to
participate in a government they saw as a thin cover for oligarchy. The sweeping
reforms that the current administration is conducting are a welcome respite to
the anarchy that the previous governments have seemed to tolerate. Hopefully, the Aquino administration will be able to resolve the Philippines’ deeply
rooted structural and cultural problems which would be enough to direct our political
democracy and government as a whole to stability and progress.
References:
Edward
Craig, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Volume Eight, p. 371
http://apgovernmentchs.wikispaces.com/Locke,%20Hobbes,%20and%20Rosseau
http://countrystudies.us/philippines/79.htm
http://countrystudies.us/philippines/82.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_the
Philippines
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_nature
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/hobbes/ hobbes_life.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes-moral/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rousseau/
http://www.iep.utm.edu/hobmoral/
http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jun/rousseau.html
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/hobbes/hobbesbio.htm
http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/hobb.htm
http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/rous.htm
http://www.publicbookshelf.com/public_html/Outline_of_Great_Books_Volume_I/socialcon_bhc.html
http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/hobbes/themes
http://www.studymode.com/essays/Thomas-Hobbes-125659.html?topic
http://www.studymode.com/essays/Thomas-Hobbes-Biography-And-View-On-175796.html
anakbeong.blogspot.com,SocialBar_1,24187607,""
