Hobbes and Locke

[spacetime]

Anyone read the books by these historical authors? I was just reading how Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson were influenced by their thoughts and wondered if it is worth picking up a copy of their respected books.

[Propertarian]

Locke's book (treatise on government) is an important text to read if you live in America due to its influence on the thought of American thought and structure as well as an important critique of Hobbes book.

Hobbes 'book' Leviathan is one of the three most important books in the history of political thought WORLDWIDE. Arguments from Leviathan are still used today, it is the basis of a lot of game theory (especially the prisoner's dilemma), is the first primary secular justification of both hierarchy and government in the west since at least the middle ages, and is EXTRAORDINARILY well written. Locke and Marx (and Rousseau and Bentham and Mill and Kant etc.) all draw on Hobbes. It is a book of philosophy, poetry, literature; and, read correctly, history. READ HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN. This is coming from someone who agrees with very little of what he says; it is that good.

So my recommendation in terms of action is to read and understand Leviathan, especially the first few hundred pages, and if you are intrigued, read Locke.

If you read Locke and still aren't satisfied or just dig political philosophy, check out John Rawls book A Theory of Justice . Once you have read all three, it is not implausible to say you have read the three greatest works of political thought in western history.

[hmkpoker]

The problem I have with Hobbes is his justification of the state. Hobbes assumes that human beings are inherently evil ("solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"), and I don't believe that that is the case.

[cambraceres]

Non-humanist viewpoints were so popular in his day

[Zygote]

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The problem I have with Hobbes is his justification of the state. Hobbes assumes that human beings are inherently evil ("solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"), and I don't believe that that is the case.

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Hobbes' justifcation doesn't work for democracy. if man is inherently evil, using government controlled by the majority of man doesn't solve the problem any more so than the answer, on the turtoises back, to the person who questions what the earth stands on.

[Zygote]

Propertarian, I think you may enjoy this article. Please give the whole thing a try and let me know what you think,

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academ.../Property.html

[Zygote]

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Anyone read the books by these historical authors? I was just reading how Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson were influenced by their thoughts and wondered if it is worth picking up a copy of their respected books.

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I've read quite a bit of Locke and his works aren't much more than one guys ideas built up on his subjective principles. His reasoning is almost always wrong and he oversimplifies political and economic situations that often end up being misrepresentations of reality.

I just dont like his complete inability to objectively deal with the philosophical aspects of politics and economics. He loves to jump on to highly unfounded assumptions and just works on from there.

May be your cup of tea, but definitely wasn't mine. IMO there are much much better political, economic and philosophical writings to focus your time on.

[aeest400]

Locke is a good deal more "contemporary' in his prose than Hobbes, even though they both worked mainly in the late 17th Century. Also, Locke's presentation is more organized and straightforward. In fact, without a strong background in the history of ideas, you will miss much of what Hobbes is arguing. However, they are both hugely influential in the history of philosophy. If you are really interested in philosophy, I'd take a stab at Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" (misleading title for a 700 page book). If you find it interesting, then you can study some history and approach Hobbes. However, be warned that you have to be pretty into this stuff to get through it. You should probably just start with something like Russell's Hist. of Western Philosophy or Tarnas' Passion of the Western Mind, so you can have a more informed approach to them.

Here's a random quote from Locke to give you an idea of what you are in for:

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No moral principles so clear and so generally received as the forementioned speculative maxims. If those speculative Maxims, whereof we discoursed in the foregoing chapter, have not an actual universal assent from all mankind, as we there proved, it is much more visible concerning practical Principles, that they come short of an universal reception: and I think it will be hard to instance any one moral rule which can pretend to so general and ready an assent as, "What is, is"; or to be so manifest a truth as this, that "It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be." Whereby it is evident that they are further removed from a title to be innate; and the doubt of their being native impressions on the mind is stronger against those moral principles than the other. Not that it brings their truth at all in question. They are equally true, though not equally evident. Those speculative maxims carry their own evidence with them: but moral principles require reasoning and discourse, and some exercise of the mind, to discover the certainty of their truth. They lie not open as natural characters engraven on the mind; which, if any such were, they must needs be visible by themselves, and by their own light be certain and known to everybody. But this is no derogation to their truth and certainty; no more than it is to the truth or certainty of the three angles of a triangle being equal to two right ones: because it is not so evident as "the whole is bigger than a part," nor so apt to be assented to at first hearing. It may suffice that these moral rules are capable of demonstration: and therefore it is our own faults if we come not to a certain knowledge of them. But the ignorance wherein many men are of them, and the slowness of assent wherewith others receive them, are manifest proofs that they are not innate, and such as offer themselves to their view without searching.

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And here's one from Hobbes:

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WHEN man reasoneth, he does nothing else but conceive a sum total, from addition of parcels; or conceive a remainder, from subtraction of one sum from another: which, if it be done by words, is conceiving of the consequence of the names of all the parts, to the name of the whole; or from the names of the whole and one part, to the name of the other part. And though in some things, as in numbers, besides adding and subtracting, men name other operations, as multiplying and dividing; yet they are the same: for multiplication is but adding together of things equal; and division, but subtracting of one thing, as often as we can. These operations are not incident to numbers only, but to all manner of things that can be added together, and taken one out of another. For as arithmeticians teach to add and subtract in numbers, so the geometricians teach the same in lines, figures (solid and superficial), angles, proportions, times, degrees of swiftness, force, power, and the like; the logicians teach the same in consequences of words, adding together two names to make an affirmation, and two affirmations to make a syllogism, and many syllogisms to make a demonstration; and from the sum, or conclusion of a syllogism, they subtract one proposition to find the other. Writers of politics add together pactions to find men's duties; and lawyers, laws and facts to find what is right and wrong in the actions of private men. In sum, in what matter soever there is place for addition and subtraction, there also is place for reason; and where these have no place, there reason has nothing at all to do.

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[morphball]

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Locke's book (treatise on government) is an important text to read if you live in America due to its influence on the thought of American thought and structure as well as an important critique of Hobbes book.


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It is actually the BASIS for much of our government, I actually cited this work the one time I had to address constitutional issues in a case...

[Propertarian]

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The problem I have with Hobbes is his justification of the state. Hobbes assumes that human beings are inherently evil ("solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"), and I don't believe that that is the case.


[/ QUOTE ] I agree with this criticism of Hobbes. I also think his philosophy is self-defeating in a sense when taken literally and parochially: the absolute monarch is a person, and if all people are evil, so is the soveriegn, and he will torture and exploit all of his/her 'subjects' whenever he feels like it.


But he also argues that because humans can't agree on what is ethical or unethical, we need written, human made positive laws in order to coexist peacefully; a more plausible viewpoint imo.


If you take it to mean, instead, that humans should submit to a certain set of positive laws and follow them faithfully; binding themselves to the mast like Ulyssus because they know they are myopic and disagree with each other and emotionl, then he has more of a case. Hobbes can be read as trying to figure out how a group of competitive beings with different viewpoints can get along. In my view, Hobbes overrates how competitive people are, and he also fails to realize that agreement on basic moral issues (e.g. murder, battery, helping someone in need if it comes at a small cost to oneself) throughout human history has been CLOSE to Unanimous. I also do not agree that government should provide ONLY security, as Hobbes posits.

You do not have to agree with a work to recognize its greatness.