World Building - philosophy

I'm not yet feeling better, but as I wade through Hume for class, three things cross my mind. A) I wish I were doing something else right now. B) Though I can't spare much time, I wish I had a moment to spare to write a little something creative. C) I wonder which of the philosophers I've read the UFPE kingdom would like the best. These three thoughts led me, naturally enough, to take a break from Hume to write a bit here.

Once upon a time, I read a good couple dozen of these philosophers, but that was several years ago, and I only have the vaguest recollections of most of them. As this course progresses, I may change my mind about the Royal Family's philosophy of morality and government, but there's no guarantee I'll ever think to write about this particular angle of this universe again.

So far in this course we've read Hobbes, Locke, and Hume. It's a pretty scarce sample of all the philosophical variety of human history, but it provides a nice cornerstone for this post.

Hobbes: any Royal Family should like Hobbes for the easy justification he offers for any kind of government that is not actively murdering its citizens. Government, he says, is better than no government at all, so take what you can get and be happy you're not in a state of internecine war. All morality can be traced back to self-interest; people are better off if we've all agreed to honor our promises and if government is available to back up these promises with force.

So does the RF like this? The problem is that Hobbes provides a fairly bleak picture of human nature, and in a world where there are non-human sentient species, the leaders of the human race should want to glorify humanity more than Hobbes does. So Hobbes is out.

Locke: as one of the strongest influences on the American revolution, Locke's vision of government is a lot riskier for a government. If they're not doing what the people want them to do, the people have the right to opt out of the social contract and overthrow the bad leaders. On the other hand, Locke offers a useful take on property for any expansionist regime; once people mix their labor with inanimate objects, the objects become their property. And once labor is mixed with the objects, they gain a lot of value.

A Lockean philosophy would also place humans over the less industrial sentient species (namely Elves) and offer justification for the human expansion into Elven lands. This expansion is a key plot point for the backstory behind the UFPE. The problem with Locke comes in his political philosophy; he advocates for the separation of powers and claims that absolute monarchy cannot be legitimate.

Perhaps one could imagine a philosophy that combines Locke's view of property and Hobbes's view of government. That is, property is such a hugely important natural right that any government which protects it should be obeyed. This is simplifying both these men to a ridiculous degree, but I think it works for my purposes.

This leaves Hume, and I'm thinking of making Hume's view the heretic view. Maybe MC's One True Love is a closet Humean, eh? Hume is the ultimate skeptic: property is merely the result of the laws people create, and morality is nothing more than our feelings about certain kinds of motives people have. Or even if he does not embrace Hume's view on the specifics, I like the idea that skepticism is heretical in this society. And this intolerance of questioning could be a parallel to draw between the human Royal Family and the Bad Guy Nation.

This brings up more questions than I can address right now - what is the form of the human kingdom, anyway? Absolute monarchy? Constitutional monarchy with a council? Has this system been constant since its inception? Who developed the leading philosophy, anyway? Was it ever the heretical view?

As usual, the best answers produce more questions. Back to Hume.