Реферат: The Injustice That Surrounds The Americas Essay

So it is that the eagle on the United States shield is the Iroquois eagle and the bundle of arrows in its grasp originally numbered five and not thirteen. The truth is that the settlers of America not only took the land from the Indians but also the concepts, to better themselves and their needs.

Philosophies of Hobbes and Nietzsche

Thomas Hobbes

Hobbes argued that people were originally in a state of nature and were controlled by the laws, drives, and impulses of nature. The state of nature was cruel and hard. People lived lives that were solitary, poor, nasty brutish and short. Hobbes believed that people remain tied to nature and are still cruel and self-interested.

Hobbes believed that all people want and deserve freedom. He defined freedom as a condition in which want is absent and all basic human needs are met. He believed that freedom could only be enjoyed if society is ordered and peaceful. Hobbes believed that people should give up all their rights to a sovereign who would control the selfishness of human nature to end the turmoil of the natural state.

Following this concept or theory that Hobbes proposed, he would be in agreement with the Spanish conquistadors taking over South America and destroying the civilizations that resided their in the beginning. Hobbes would have been in agreement with the monarchy type system that the Spanish had created. The one sovereign, being the King, and the subjects never asking questions and only following his orders. The Inca, Aztec, and Iroquois being considered possibly as in their natural state and in need of an ordered nature would prefer this type of system over their already supposedly crude democratic way of thinking.

Hobbes may have also proposed that the conquistadors were only acting on their natural state being selfish and crude, doing only what they could have done without an ordered and peaceful political structure. The Indians on the other hand could have been seen as having a structure already built that followed his idea. Having an Emperor who delegated the proper authority that was never questioned and always fair. In either case it would seem that a natural state, according to Hobbes needed to be met.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche proposed a difficult concept in the 1800 s, that God was dead and/or dying. He proposed this because of the way that humans go about their everyday lives trying to increase their own power over people and objects to the point that we eliminate any boundary or reason for not doing so, even that of God. He proposed that humans have even gone to the point in which they have deemed themselves God. Nietzsche also states that there are two types of morality; one being slave-morality; and the other being master-morality.

Slave-morality is fashioned by weak groups that look to the entire group to be happy to find the proper answer to the dilemma. They would see sympathy from the stronger person towards the weak as being a helpful and redeeming quality. The Inca had a political structure that fit into this category. The Inca made sure that there was always enough food for the sick and injured. They felt that they were not better than the weak. They felt that everyone should be equal. They shared the land with the animals. The land and the Indian where all equal and on the same plane of existence.

On the other hand, the Spanish conquistador and the settlers of North America felt as though the land was there s to own and plunder. They felt as though they had the right to enslave the Indians and kick them off of the land. The settlers thought themselves to be superior to the Indians. Nietzsche would have said that the settlers had a master-morality which would prefer to develop the strong and forget about the weak. The weak would not be deemed able to provide enough strength to support the powerful. This type of morality appeals to the individual type nature of the white man .

Bibliography

Saphrophyte. Webster s Encyclopedia Dictionary. Canadian ed. 1988.

Velasquez, Manuel. Philosophy: A Text with Readings. 6th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1997

Wright, Ronald. Stolen Continents: The New World Through Indian Eyes. Toronto: Penguin Books, 1993