A. Gaffar Peang-Meth
Pacific Daily News
Man is brought into the world as a free being, gifted with the mental and physical qualities that allow him to confront the challenges of daily living. Unlike animals, reliant on instinct and cunning, men are endowed with an intelligence that generally allows them to overcome complex problems and acts as a governor on man's free will.In the political philosophy of the Western tradition, English philosopher and political theorist Thomas Hobbes wrote in "Leviathan" that men are selfish creatures, naturally wicked, interested only in promoting their own self-interest. "All mankind (is in) a perpetual and restless desire for power ... that (stops) only in death," says Hobbes, who saw the state of nature as a "war of every man against every man" and life as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
"To rule such a world requires a powerful absolute monarch, said Hobbes.
French writer and political theorist, Jean Jacques Rousseau, whose writings were a catalyst to the French Revolution that ended absolute rule and introduced in France principles of citizenship and inalienable rights, wrote: "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they."
No comments:
Post a Comment