From The Original Fear To The Social Fear

The development of human history always accompanied with fear.The world is full of fear to a baby when he separated from his mother.The fear of the fracture of the“original bond” will go through the process of personal growth.And with the development of human history,some new fears will be created.In some sense,it can be said that human's civilization is a process of fighting with fear.The origins of human fear can be analyzed from both internal and external reasons.The external fear is due to the unknown "space" and "time",and the internal fear mainly comes from the human's weakness of "physical" and "psychological." The factors of fear have been deeply buried in the human's nature and life.Regardless of religion,region,race,gender,age,etc.,no one can get rid of fear.The difference is that different ages and life experience can make a difference in fear.And when fear suffers a profound philosophical speculations by the brightest thinkers,it will form a system and become the great power to influence the process of human civilization.In the modern Western political thoughts,Hobbes is the earliest man who has deeply discussed fear.In Hobbes' s view,because of the people who live in the natural state always in fear of violent death,so under the drive of rational and due to the need of self-preservation,they will rant all rights to a sovereign.At the same time,the "leviathan" is born.In his view,the sovereign must be strong enough,or unable to resist the threat of fear.In order to get rid of the fear of violent death,human beings begin to establish the country.Therefore,the understanding of the concept of fear has become the key to Hobbes' political philosophy.But due to the limitation of various conditions at that time,the Hobbes' views of fear still have many limitations.Firstly,he deeply desires peace because of the fear of war.In order to safeguard peace,he thinks that we must give a sovereign infinitely power.As a result,his theory easily leads tototalitarianism.Secondly,his view of fear serves the theory of country' origin,so it lacks the discussion about political and social fear.Finally,because Hobbes emphasizes death fear too much,so his theory can't explain suicide.Later thinkers laid on the basis of it and combined the characteristics of their age,and then developed the Hobbes' view of fear.The western political philosophers' view of fear have experienced from Hobbes' s original fear,political fear,and then to the social fear.For the political fear,I mainly take Montesquieu and Tocqueville as the examples.For the social fear,I take Fromm and Bauman as the examples.Most important,the three kinds of fear can not be replaced by each other.They often co-exist at the same time,the difference of them is that there are different fears in different times.Before the country appeared,people's fear is mainly composed of the original fear.During the period of the modern state,it is given priority to political fear.In contemporary society,we are in a stage of social fear,and the "risk society" and "globalization" has heightened our fear.The rise of "modernity" lead to the spread of the anxiety,make most modern people live in a nihilistic situation.In the time of the tool rationality and science and technology,people's own value is ignored,this bring deeply fear to modern people.In order to avoid this kind of fear,they attempted to ease inner emptiness through acolasia or abstinence.But unfortunately these methods can only bring temporarily peace,when passion fades,the fear will hit again.This attempt to escape from fear by individuals is difficult to success,because they ignore the environment they lived.Man as a social animal,living in a society that is easily affected by environment.So as to root out this fear,needs the efforts of the two aspects of individual and society.Only through rediscover "ego" and to build a "perfect society",it is likely to ease the fear of society.To ease the modern means of anxiety,I think that we should reconstruct value.It mainly includes: to find yourself,to recognize equality,to reconstruct positive liberty and back into the arms of love.In contemporary society,whether can alleviate the fear or not,it not only relates to the social stability and the existence of the government,but also relates to our human happiness and future.