05-04-2005, 05:39 PM
Abramelin,May 1 2005, 04:36 PM Wrote:This is a philosophical topic . It is not about economics or politics . Politics and economics come from the will of humans . I am not talking about what Man wants , I am talkinng about who he really is , his real place no matter what he wants .
Please , no trolling , no incoherent posts , no quick trivial answers in my thread . This is a serious topic , I want you to be sincere .
Abramelin
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My 2 dineros for what it is worth. Baring the fact that your argument is unsubstantiated, and makes leaps of logic that defy reason, I believe the gist of what you are suggesting is that humans have no claim of ownership on the resources of the planet.
You say "It is not about economics or politics", and some tripe about human will. Well, philosophy is also the realm of human will and mental accuity, so what are we wanking on about for then? Because without this mental masturbation we would just be going about "survival of the fitest", right? Yet, we are a civil society and as humans we "rise" above our "survival instinct" to engage in discourse.
So to catch you up, let's review some hundreds of years of philosophy here; (Again, if you are serious, then you should read up on some.)
Let's start with Hobbes ground breaking work from 1651, Leviathan;
A Wikipedia summary,
Quote:In Leviathan, Hobbes set out his doctrine of modern natural right as the foundation of societies and legitimate governments. In the natural condition of mankind, while some men may be stronger or more intelligent than others, none are so strong and smart as to be beyond a fear of violent death. When threatened with death, man in his natural state cannot help but defend himself in any way possible. Self-defense against violent death is Hobbes' highest human necessity, and rights are borne of necessity. In the state of nature, then, each of us has a right to everything in the world. Due to the scarcity of things in the world, there is a constant, and rights-based, "war of all against all" (bellum omnium contra omnes). Life in the state of nature is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" (xiii).
But war isn't in man's best interest. According to Hobbes, man has a self-interested and materialistic desire to end war â "the passions that incline men to peace are fear of death, desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living, and a hope by their industry to obtain them" (xiii, 14). He forms peaceful societies by entering into a social contract. According to Hobbes, society is a population beneath an authority, to whom all individuals in that society surrender just enough of their natural right for the authority to be able to ensure internal peace and a common defense. This sovereign, whether monarch, aristocracy or democracy (though Hobbes prefers monarchy), should be a Leviathan, an absolute authority. Law, for Hobbes, is the enforcement of contracts. The political theory of Leviathan varies little from that set out in two earlier works, The Elements of Law and De Cive (On The Citizen). (A minor aside: Hobbes almost never uses the phrase "state of nature" in his works.) Wikipedia - Hobbes
So, from a Hobbsian point of view, survival of the fitest is bad, and the solution is absolute control from the Monarchy, or Dictator to manage the distribution of resources.
Jump forward to 1690, and we have John Locke - Second Treatise of Civil Government Again, relying on a Wiki summary;
Quote:In The Second Treatise of Civil Government (sometimes The Second Treatise on Civil Government) Locke lays out his philosophy for the creation and mechanics of civil society. A theory of property is central to Locke's understanding of the role of civil government, a main function of which is to protect this property. Locke is concerned with developing a moral justification for individual right to property in the absence of the consent of the people.
Locke's attempt to develop a moral justification for individual ownership of property is in part a reaction to Filmer, who had argued that "the only way out of original communism was to assume that in some way or other every individual in the world had consented to every act of property acquisition". Locke begins by agreeing with Fillmer. He refers to scripture to show that "God as King David says, Psal. CXV. Xvj. Has given the Earth to the Children of Men, given it to Mankind in common". Locke accepts the premise that men share a right over the world. The problem then is to show that "Men might come to have property ... without any express Compact of all the Commoners." Locke's answer is that "every Man has a Property in his own Person" and "The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his hands, we may say, are properly his" (287-288). For Locke, a man may come to be morally justified in his individual ownership of property when "he has mixed his Labour" (288) with it.
It is clear to Locke that individual ownership of property is morally justifiable without the consent of the people. He also argues that it is practical, saying that if common consent were necessary, "Children or Servants could not cut the Meat which their Father and Master had provided for them in common, without assigning every one his peculiar part" (289). Therefore, individual ownership of property is established as both morally justifiable and practical. Wiki - 2nd Treatise
Locke argues that a person must own himself, and therefore anything one contributes efforts towards can also be claimed as their own. Now, jump ahead another generation to THE SOCIAL CONTRACT OR PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL RIGHT by Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1762 And, again a quick synopsis courtesy of Wiki,
Quote:Perhaps Rousseau's most important work is The Social Contract, which outlines the basis for a legitimate political order. Published in 1762 and condemned by the Parliament of Paris when it appeared, it became one of the most influential works of abstract political thought in the Western tradition. Building on his earlier work, such as the Discourse on Inequality Rousseau claimed that the state of nature eventually degenerates into a brutish condition without law or morality, at which point the human race must adopt institutions of law or perish. In the degenerate phase of the state of nature, man is prone to be in frequent competition with his fellow men whilst at the same time becoming increasingly dependent on them. This double pressure threatens both his survival and his freedom. According to Rousseau, by joining together through the social contract and abandoning their claims of natural right, 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. Whilst Rousseau argues that sovereignty should thus be in the hands of the people, he also makes a sharp distinction between sovereign and government. The government is charged with implementing and enforcing the general will and is composed of a smaller group of citizens, known as magistrates. Rousseau was bitterly opposed to the idea that the people should exercise sovereignty via a representative assembly. Rather, they should make the laws directly. This restriction means that Rousseau's ideal state could only be realised, if at all, within a very small society. Much of the 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. Wiki - The Social Contract
So here Rousseau begins to define the "society" that we live in today. And, finally, we get to some of the modern day thought with John Rawls and Wiki - A Theory of Justice with counterpoint by Robert Nozick in Amazon - Anarchy, State and Utopia. Rawls further defines our notions of liberal society in that he argues that we would come up with two principles of Justice; 1) each person has the most extensive basic liberties that are compatible for everyone having these liberties, and 2) social inequalities will be arranged so that they benefit everyone and such that we all have equal access to beneficial social positions. Nozick dissents in that he would limit the role of the state to that of a minimalist, "night watchman" which is all that can be morally justified. These two Harvard philosophers now form the most important modern understanding of liberalism and libertarianism.
As you can see, your simple notion of ownership has an extensive history of philosophical thought in the role of humans within a social context. What responsibility does one have to their fellow humans? I have touched on the briefest notions, however salient to our modern experience.
As, for my personal beliefs, well I believe we have a moral responsibility for future societies and to coexist with nature in a renewable eco-friendly manner sufficient to nurture the planet and humanities existence. We have become the masters of all we survey, whether we like it or not, now we must learn to live together in a globally just society. We humans have a legacy of harms to the environment, for which we owe recompense, but not at the cost of additional harms. Simply put, we must fnd a renewable and sustainable balance point. As you might have guessed by now, this topic is not only about philosophy, but also about politics, and economy.
I think this topic has gone the way of similiar ones posted here by those topic authors who are uninformed in the basics of the question. (e.g. non-physicists trying to grasp the physics concepts related to faster than light travel.) I challenge you to rise to the occasion and craft a worthy reply.