Answer:
- Hobbes' interpretation of the social contract believed human beings were inherently at odds with each other and therefore needed an authoritarian government to rule over them.
- Lockes' interpretation of the social contract believed that human beings are morally neutral by nature, and can live side by side without a government -- but that creating a government makes society better.
Explanation:
Both English philosophers, Hobbes and Locke, believed there is a "social contract" -- that governments are formed by the will of the people. But their theories on why people want to live under governments were very different.
Thomas Hobbes published his political theory in <em>Leviathan</em> in 1651, following the chaos and destruction of the English Civil War. He saw human beings as naturally suspicious of one another, in competition with each other, and harmful toward one another as a result. Forming a government meant giving up personal liberty, but gaining security against what would otherwise be a situation of every person at war with every other person.
John Locke published his <em>Two Treatises on Civil Government</em> in 1690, following the mostly peaceful transition of government power that was the Glorious Revolution in England. Locke believed people are born as blank slates--with no preexisting knowledge or moral leanings. Experience then guides them to the knowledge and the best form of life, and they choose to form governments to make life and society better.
In teaching about Hobbes and Locke, I've often described the difference between them in this way. If society were playground basketball, Hobbes believed you must have a referee who sets and enforces rules, or else the players will eventually get into heated arguments and bloody fights with one another, because people get nasty in competition that way. Locke believed you could have an enjoyable game of playground basketball without a referee, but a referee makes the game better because then any disputes that come up between players have a fair way of being resolved. Of course, Hobbes and Locke never actually wrote about basketball -- a game not invented until 1891 in America by James Naismith. But it's just an illustration I've used to try to show the difference of ideas between Hobbes and Locke. :-)
Assyria was the region located in the ancient Near East which, under the Neo-Assyrian Empire, reached from Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) through Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and down through Egypt. The empire began modestly at the city of Ashur (known as Subartu to the Sumerians), located in Mesopotamia north-east of Babylon, where merchants who traded in Anatolia became increasingly wealthy and that affluence allowed for the growth and prosperity of the city.
According to one interpretation of passages in the biblical Book of Genesis, Ashur was founded by a man named Ashur son of Shem, son of Noah, after the Great Flood, who then went on to found the other important Assyrian cities. A more likely account is that the city was named Ashur after the deity of that name sometime in the 3rd millennium BCE; the same god's name is the origin for `Assyria'. The biblical version of the origin of Ashur appears later in the historical record after the Assyrians had accepted Christianity and so it is thought to be a re-interpretation of their early history which was more in keeping with their newly-adopted belief system.
The Assyrians were a Semitic people who originally spoke and wrote Akkadian before the easier to use Aramaic language became more popular. Historians have divided the rise and fall of the Assyrian Empire into three periods: The Old Kingdom, The Middle Empire, and The Late Empire (also known as the Neo-Assyrian Empire), although it should be noted that Assyrian history continued on past that point; there are still Assyrians living in the regions of Iran and Iraq, and elsewhere, in the present day. The Assyrian Empire is considered the greatest of the Mesopotamian empires due to its expanse and the development of the bureaucracy and military strategies which allowed it to grow and flourish.
The trade colony of Karum Kanesh was among the most lucrative centres for trade in the ancient Near East
Answer; the federal courts
