Essay on Breach of Social Contract
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Mr. Kohlhaas has been charged with a number of serious crimes, and he is here to answer those charges. Mr. Kohlhaas did not rise one morning and decide to commit a few crimes. He did not in fact start out as a criminal in any way but as an aggrieved citizen who was treated shabbily by his own government and its legal system. He is here again defending himself in that same legal system, yet it is a system that has failed him numerous times and that itself should be charged with a crime for doing so. Indeed, we can look to the English political theorist Thomas Hobbes for an explanation if not a full justification for Mr. Kohlhaas's actions. Mr. Kohlhaas may have acted rashly, but he did have good reason and should not be tried by a government that has already failed its citizens and so shown itself to be illegitimate. Mr. Kohlhaas is here because of an appeal from the church, from Martin Luther, and not from a government he no longer recognizes as having any claim on his loyalty. Why do we owe allegiance to our government in the first place? The reason given by Hobbes, following certain other theorists with a similar view, is the social contract, the agreement between the people and their government by which the government protects and promotes the interests of the people, receiving loyalty and support from the people in return. The kind of conflict we have seen in the past between the government and Mr. Kohlhaas show precisely the sort of thing the government is suppo
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of a long line of political theorists attempting to respond to the problems of social order and the relationship between society and the individual. In doing so, Hobbes appeals to natural law. For Hobbes, political science means developing the concept of the political community. Warfare is the natural state of things; the social contract is intended to ward off war; and once the social contract is broken, a state of war is all that is possible.
This natural state of war is at its height in the prepolitical state of nature, and societies are formed by men specifically to curb these natural tendencies. Hobbes sees political science as having the responsibility for examining the development of society from this prepolitical state to a government which can bring together the disparate abilities and attitudes of different people under one controlling rule. Political science is thus directed at helping discover how to achieve and maintain order, and order becomes the "good" to which the energies of the political analyst are aimed.
Hobbes uses the historical record as he knows it to support his ideas concerning the development of society. The natural state of war was something man wanted to escape from, says Hobbes, and what H
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Martin Luther, Hobbes Hobbes, , Thomas Hobbes, social contract, political society, Indeed English, development society, system system, natural war, legal system, political community, political science, hobbes political science, nature society, social structure, government supposed protect, social contract broken, social contract agreement,
Approximate Word count = 1381
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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