The philosophy of the New Age after the Renaissance and the Dark Middle Ages brings an entirely new look at the man and his meaning of being on Earth. Philosophers of the new time rationalized man ruined the dualism of the divine and the human, and passed to the duality of reason and passion. Using the examples of the philosophical concepts of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, one can see how a person copes with freedom and necessity, cognizes this world, and coexists safely with people in a complex state model.
John Locke is considered the systematizer of empiricism and the author of the pedagogical and political programs of liberalism. The basis of human nature, according to John Locke, is his free intentions and ideas that fund human thinking (Vaughn, 2022). Man is born as a tabula rasa, and subsequently, experience fills his thinking and constructs his first ideas. Like a blank sheet of paper, a person enters this world and only then becomes a person over time.
A person is harmless, and the experience and knowledge gained do not seek to be directed against other people and society. People process experience through reflection – an inner feeling; it gives the most straightforward first ideas. Thus, people have subjective opinions based only on their unique experiences. It means that even the basic concepts of good, evil, and justice are individual. Following the logic, people should be in constant conflict, not finding a consensus.
However, according to John Locke, this is not the case since God and man are by nature inextricably linked. Man’s fate is dominated by divine voluntarism, which dictates the outcome of every disobedient subject. In the idea of divine voluntarism, the free nature of man is laid down since, according to John Locke, man is free to act within the framework of the divine plan.
Thomas Hobbes builds a model of a person who is not subordinate to God and his plan but to his passions and vices. Thomas Hobbes presents the model of man as mechanistic or naturalized, and his knowledge is divided into two types: mathematical and dogmatic. He understands the movement of objects as the only engine of all living things, the development of people, society, and the state.
Human possibilities are based on his skills, and his moral views are based on his sensual nature. The core of the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes is the concept of natural law, which denotes the desire of people for self-preservation and reproduction. The natural state of people forced them to live in a “war of all against all.” (Vaughn, 2022). It ended only with an agreement on creating the all-powerful state of Leviathan.
Nevertheless, people strive for a pragmatic result, thanks to which a contract is born, leading to the centralization of power and the management of people by one force. According to Thomas Hobbes, people strive to protect themselves first of all; they can make many sacrifices for this, including freedom. Sacrificing this, they trust that nothing threatens their lives since the contractual state takes responsibility for all misfortunes.
The mechanization of human nature occurs at Thomas Hobbes’s methods of cognition, the most critical issue in the philosophy of the New Age. People can learn by the deductive method or by the inductive method. The deductive method corresponds to mechanics, and the inductive method corresponds to physics. The thinking of people is based on feelings; first of all, indirectly, the perception of objects in space; their movements, and the extent.
John Locke and Thomas Hobbes put feelings and experience at the center of human nature. For John Locke, a person is born as a tabula rasa and subsequently fills his life with ideas. People have been led by divine voluntarism, which helps them avoid wars and conflicts globally. Thomas Hobbes puts at the forefront the vices and passions of people and their desire for self-defense. He derives the concept of Leviathan, an all-powerful state that protects society from the war of all against all while taking away the freedom of people.
Reference
Vaughn, L. (2022). Philosophy here and now: Powerful ideas in everyday life. Oxford University Press.