CONCEPȚII SOCIAL-POLITICE ALE RENAȘTERII ȘI EPOCII MODERNE
SOCIO-POLITICAL CONCEPTIONS OF THE RENAISSANCE AND THE MODERN ERA

Author(s): Ioan Scheau
Subject(s): History, Philosophy, Social Sciences, Political Philosophy, Social Philosophy, Sociology, Political history, Social history, Modern Age, Methodology and research technology, Social development
Published by: Editura Eikon
Keywords: society; state; politics; Renaissance; Modern Era; law;
Summary/Abstract: This paper presents four socio-political conceptions of the Renaissance and the Modern Era: Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke and Hume. Machiavelli analyzes two forms of government, the principality and the republic, corresponding to the absolute monarchy and the current democracy. He also speaks of the separation of powers in the state, in a platonic sense, with reference to the three existing social classes: the sovereign, the nobility and the common people. Hobbes introduces the notion of a social pact that makes the transition from the natural state to the social state of humanity. It is signed between citizens and the state and is seen as a transfer of rights from the citizen to the sovereign. The risk of the social state is that the State, endowed with too many rights, becomes the Leviathan monster that swallows individuals. Locke lays the foundations of the modern state on two fundamental ideas: human rights and the separation of powers in the state. He argues that every person benefits from a series of natural rights: life, health, liberty and property. Within the state, power should not fall on the shoulders of a single person, that is why he speaks of the separation of powers in the state: legislative, executive and federative (army). Hume argues that society is that socio-political organization that must solve the problem of satisfying human needs. For it to work, a series of operating conditions (private property, free market) and a series of rules (laws of justice) are needed.

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