PSIR 307 Thomas Hobbes Who was Hobbes Born

PSIR 307 Thomas Hobbes

Who was Hobbes? • Born in 1588 • Studied in Oxford • During the English Civil War fled to Paris in 1640 • He met with Galileo and Descartes

Social contract thinker • State of nature would be state of war: individuals would choose to enter into a social contract and create an absolute government, best a monarchy. • Different views on Hobbes’s individual: – Self-interested – Egoist – A moral agent

Solipsism or egoism • Solipsism: we know the world , feel, or judge by reference to ourselves • Egoism: mere self-interest • Hobbes wished to duty with promise-keeping

Contractarianism • Relationship between the ruler and the ruled: – A) Agency or authorization – B) Non-resistance – C) Non-contractarian version of protection and obedience • Assessments on these statements: – A) self-accusation to accuse the ruler – B) No accountability – C) Living under a ruler is a tacit consent

Agency and authorization • Consent to institute an agent for the whole, an impossibility • Political covenant: political authority should be unified • Political accountability does not make much sense

Non-resistance compact between subjects • Subjects promise for not resisting • Rulers are not subject to the contract: no accountability • People making contract by each other to make themselves Sovereign: non-sense. “There is not such think as a ‘corporate’ people in existence before the covenant”

De facto authority • Preservation and obedience (like family) and this is a form of tacit consent • Contractarianism resolves the source of the conflict by establishing a collective agency. Individuals need a ruler for protection but such authorization is shaped by solipsism and relativism caused by solipsism • The main purpose is equip the ruler with sufficient power, which is an absolute and unified sovereignty • Consent, might, and self interest • Physics, phycology, and political science