Should we have government?
In our first lesson, we used a short film on Milgrim's experiment as a stimulus for a discussion about authority, and whether authority figures played a positive or negative role in society.
Next, we considered what it would be like if we had no government at all. This is a classic philosophical thought experiment about the "state of nature" - a hypothetical world before formal society or government. Philosophers use this thought experiment to discuss how a legitimate government could have emerged from nothing, and why people may have entered into social contracts. Opinions on it tend to differ according to one's ideas about basic human nature. In groups, we looked at some ideas that different philosophers had about human nature, and we then tried to work out what their answers to the state of nature problem might be:
Next, we considered what it would be like if we had no government at all. This is a classic philosophical thought experiment about the "state of nature" - a hypothetical world before formal society or government. Philosophers use this thought experiment to discuss how a legitimate government could have emerged from nothing, and why people may have entered into social contracts. Opinions on it tend to differ according to one's ideas about basic human nature. In groups, we looked at some ideas that different philosophers had about human nature, and we then tried to work out what their answers to the state of nature problem might be:
We finished off this unit with a big debate about which philosopher we agreed with most (we weren't able to agree!)