Newbies

Re: Hobbes

Smiling Dave — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 11:27:53 GMT

That's what you got out of the first 400 pages?

Re: Hobbes

Anenome — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 23:17:13 GMT

grant.w.underwood:
i havent even read Human Action yet!

It's tough... 400 pages of defining his terms before the book even begins, <_<;;; Certainly admirable to define terms first of course.

Re: Hobbes

grant.w.underwood — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 20:21:10 GMT

i appreciate the reading suggestions and they were exactly what i was looking for.

i do intend to read leviathan one day. there are just way to many books that i deem more important at the moment. i havent even read Human Action yet!

I am also not doing this just to start arguments, but if he rants about how a government needs to be able to kill its people if they disagree i intend to say something. A small child would be able to fight that argument and win.

i also want to know if my teacher follows Hobbes completely and/or if he passes off information as an original thought that is actually Hobbesian.

lastly, was leviathan a socialist society? or did he just conclude that an absolute monarchy is best and whatever the king wants is best?

Re: Hobbes

Aristophanes — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 12:59:33 GMT

Considering that Hobbes's most lasting legacy is to indoctrinate all our youth that life in the state of nature is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," I think he is the one who has caused the most damage to the liberty movement in the history of mankind as I know it.

Yea, right. Have you heard of the Catholic Church?

Re: Hobbes

Wheylous — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 11:56:24 GMT

Considering that Hobbes's most lasting legacy is to indoctrinate all our youth that life in the state of nature is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," I think he is the one who has caused the most damage to the liberty movement in the history of mankind as I know it.

Re: Hobbes

ThatOldGuy — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 03:46:31 GMT

Aristophanes:
It doesn't mean he was truly religious.

I misread the post.

Aristophanes:
Didn't he almost get executed for heresy?

Almost. Also regard the section where the definition of atheism in those days is spelled out.

What does the Bernanke article have to do with my post?

Re: Hobbes

Aristophanes — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 03:35:06 GMT

Yeah, because everyone and their mother knew them all back then. Most authors drew those parallels. It doesn't mean he was truly religious. But, again, I'm sure that he was I just don't know the specifics.

Didn't he almost get executed for heresy?

EDIT: I removed my quote, it was an accident.

Re: Hobbes

ThatOldGuy — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 03:28:09 GMT

Aristophanes:
I knew Hobbes wasn't Augustine, but I thought for sure that he was religious, maybe not "deeply" as I had thought.

The entire second half of Leviathan (300+ pages) is Biblical stories justifying Hobbes' theory in the first half.

Re: Hobbes

Aristophanes — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 01:55:24 GMT

In terms of religion, the exact opposite is true.

Are you sure?

Ironically, I'm going to quote a secondary source...

In the Elements of Law Hobbes offers a cosmological argument for the existence of God (Hobbes 1640, 11.2). However, he argues, the only thing we can know about God is that he, “first cause of all causes”, exists. Our knowledge is limited in this way because our thoughts about God are limited: “we can have no conception or image of the Deity”. So when we seem to attribute features to God, we cannot literally be describing God (Hobbes 1640, 11.3). We're either expressing our inability, as when we call God incomprehensible, or we're expressing our reverence, as when we call God omniscient and just. The same indeed is going on when we call God a spirit: this is not “a name of anything we conceive”, but again a “signification of our reverence” (Hobbes 1640, 11.3).

Those three views — support for a cosmological argument, the belief that God is inconceivable by us, and the interpretation of apparent descriptions of God as not really descriptions — appear to recur in Leviathan (Hobbes 1651, 11.25, 12.6–9). However, in later work, such as the appendix to the 1668 Latin edition of Leviathan, Hobbes proposes a different view. The older Hobbes thought that we could know God to have at least one feature, namely extension.

There are some tricky general methodological questions here, about when we can reasonably say that an author is trying to communicate a view other than the one apparently stated. Note, however, that for someone allegedly covering up his atheism to avoid controversy, Hobbes took the curious approach of saying many other intensely controversial things. He was opposed to free will and to immaterial souls, opposed to Presbyterianism and to Roman Catholicism, and managed to have anti-royalists thinking he was a royalist, but at least one prominent royalist (Clarendon) thinking he supported Cromwell. This was not a recipe for a quiet life. One might see Hobbes as thinking that these things could be said with controversy, but God's existence only denied with genuine danger. But one needs, at least, a fairly complex story about Hobbes's attitudes in order to sustain the view that he was sneakily suggesting that God didn't exist.

I knew Hobbes wasn't Augustine, but I thought for sure that he was religious, maybe not "deeply" as I had thought.

Re: Hobbes

MrSchnapps — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 23:43:34 GMT

Hobbes sole intention was to figure out a way to prevent civil wars. He's not that special. I think he was a rhetorician and deeply religious.

In terms of religion, the exact opposite is true.

Also, I second Autolykos' recommendation. You really have to read the primary texts in order to comment on it in any substantial manner. Otherwise, you end up strawmanning by forming arguments and counterarguments based on secondary sources. Primary sources first. Secondary sources second.

Re: Hobbes

Autolykos — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 14:17:17 GMT

I recommend reading Hobbes' Leviathan if you want to look the gift horse in the mouth.

Re: Hobbes

Aristophanes — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 06:01:16 GMT

Also, his teacher isn't a TA. TAs don't have their own classes (i.e. teaching assistant).

I guess this is true, but they are at the same level...graduate (or he said PhD i think; it doesn't make a difference). I've had grad students, particularly for Latin, and PhD candidates for calculus (they are students under the direction of a dept. head who manages everything; ie assisting the teacher). They teach no brainer stuff. And not once did I have a grad student teaching a class of substance. He is teaching probably 201 or something not 580.

Re: Hobbes

National Acrobat — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 05:04:11 GMT

Why take such an adversarial stance to an argument who you haven't read?

Also, his teacher isn't a TA. TAs don't have their own classes (i.e. teaching assistant).

Re: Hobbes

ThatOldGuy — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 04:22:10 GMT

[Ignore this post].

Re: Hobbes

ThatOldGuy — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 04:21:26 GMT

This is a pretty good paper taking a stab at the Hobbesian position,

Reflections on the Origin and Stability of the State

Ask your TA the following question which complements Aristophanes' query here (although, it can probably be called the same query but reworded): if Hobbes' argument is correct, that all contracts must be enforced by neutral third-parties and that anything less will result in chaos, then how can nation-states exist? How does the existence of nation-states not refute Hobbes' argument? What stops Hobbes' argument from spiraling into infinite regress?