Um, does that mean I have to turn Hobbes and Locke away now? They were really looking forward to this.
Okay fellas, pack it up. Nothing to see here.
Hobbes is a treasure.
I’ll tell you what. Jakob is a film maker. If we can raise a few million dollars, and put our collective literary skills to work on a script, we can have a movie version of Leviathan ready for release by next Hallowe’en.
Scariest book I have ever read.
Matrix, Shmatrix.
You think that’s scary? Just imagine where we would be had Jefferson’s attention gravitated towards Leviathan instead of some Locke treatise he had laying around. Let’s just chalk this up to close calls in history.
Edit: So, bake sale then?
Further to the notion of Rawls & moderate anarchism, I’ve started inputting the following: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=170029 (it’s about half there, I’ll complete it asap… the anarchoesque stuff is just coming up) If nothing else it’s a pretty clear depiction of early Rawls.
EDIT: all done, except for cosmetic changes.
Am I the only one who finds calling a current set of social systems (a society) “postmodern” ironic?
Postmodernism doesn’t mean uber-modernism…
i may be completely off base here, Faust, but at least the way i look at it, morality - or to do the moral thing, is, can be, sometimes such an uphill struggle. Because we know or feel that something may be a bit selfish, or greatly selfish, or go against the grain of who we think we are, does not magically keep us from doing some particular act.
Is it “morality” that you are referring to as not being against our nature? I think the struggle and the conflict that can sometimes go on within us to either do the right thing, by our own standards (not by that of society) - or to live by the principles that we believe in do or can go against our nature in a very powerful way!! At least they go against my nature. We have been preprogrammed in this way. We have both the selfish and the altruistic genes. At the same time, we have something that the animals do not have - we are also programmed to think and to love - this is why i think we have constructed a moral standard over time in the first place - because we are quite aware of that nature within us which we would like to deny, but denying it only lends itself to being stronger, i think.
My only thought was in regard to morality as a counterbalance to short-term selfish gain. Morality does not always produce this, though it may - but this, in itself, is no big thing to me - but a reasonable/logical/altruistic/morality can hold back the untamed wild animals within us from wanting to totally devour one another. But it is capable of keeping a very powerful reality check on us.
Perhaps we could say morality is our second nature, like cooking.
Well some people’s second nature - you ought to see me try baking!!
kp
…you ought to see me doing unto others!! 
no, Oughtist, i don’t think that morality is our second nature, they are interwined like a compound, two substances merged together as one.
you can mix in music but you can’t mix the ingredients to make a cake and turn on the oven, krossie? i’ll make you a cake and you can make me a cd - a combination of slow jazz, punk rock and surf music. how would that be? 
philosophically speaking…
arcturus:
Again, if we had magic, we’d have no use for morality.
Getting in (physical) shape can be “an uphill struggle”. Writing a novel, curing cancer, getting out of bed in the morning.
Life is arduous.
Well, we’re talking philosophy here. Yup- we have to examine our values - that’s what we do.
But let’s not confound a perfectly normal disillusionment with our received values with a general critique of all moral systems. Social Contract Theory is a term that covers a family (and they’re not all close family) of approaches to social/moral theory. My view is that all moral systems represent or imply (if they don’t infer) social contracts, as a minimal case - but they differ greatly. Some include God and some do not. Some include what are taken to be a priori principles and some do not. Some require strict observance of those principles in an absolute way and some do not.
Please observe that there is a difference between short-term and long-term selfish gain. This is, I think, a more useful dichotomy than the selfish-altruistic dichotomy. But either way, moral systems are fundamental rules of conduct. Breaking those rules does not destroy them. They aren’t “real” to begin with.
My view is this - moral systems make for well-ordered societies. Full compliance is not necessary for the rules to work - well enough. I cheat where I think I can. But you can’t cheat very well if you don’t know the rules. I agree with you - morality is not “inside” us - but guilt is. The Will to Power is (that’s sloppy, but I’m going with it). Emotions are - and they can be “trained” by society towards society’s goals. That’s what moral systems do. To reject those systems outright is to succumb to unexamined emotion just as to wholly accept them is.
Hahaha, nice.
I think I had ‘wow’ in mind.
Thanks, sandy.
Social contracts only exist when the agreement is mutual where all members of a agreement benefit but not all of society is based upon mutual agreements.
How can the social contract theory explain this discrepancy?
Don’t mistake ‘social’ in this context for kumbaya. The rest of that argument has been covered.
^^what he said.
I don’t understand how you people can argue with this guy… his OP contained violent pictures and everything! Don’t you understand how significant that is?
He is only over-reacting due to simplifying and generalizing. But this is ok. He is learning, opening up, questioning. Negating is a first step to overcoming that which is false, and in the case of overcoming lies and conditioning the stronger the urge and ability to overcome, the greater the initial overcompensation. It is part of a healthy growth in consciousness.
Honestly I see no signs of either lack of intelligence or of pathology in his writings. He simply has much to learn, as do we all; but he is on the correct path. As capacity for growth increases, so will actual growth. We must challenge ourselves and expand out minds, and this is a destructive and imperfect act. No one gets it right the first time, or the first hundred times for that matter. Hell, maybe we never get it right. But at least he is trying, pushing himself. At this point it is not so much important the conclusions he is reaching, as is the buildup of destructive potential and independence of mind.
He has broken some of the molds and chains. When this happens, it is normal to spend some time obcessed and awed with this achievment. But eventually we all must move on to rebuilding and ordering again. This is an entirely personal journey. I would suggest that he not lose his hope, and not lose contact with himself while he is taking these critical steps.
For the sake of clarity, I was being sarcastic. Long ridiculous OPs with a bunch of violent images are a dime a dozen.