Can anyone explain what the fuck Thomas Hobbes was talking about?

[graywarrior]

The only thing I get is that he thought a society needed an authority to where everyone surrenders their natural liberty so that the authority is able to ensure internal peace and a common defense. This authouristy should be unquestionable but benevolent. WTF? I have to write a paper on Hobbes and the rights of Americans i.e. right to a decent education, job, health car, etc. I just can't tie the two together. I feel like a freeper!

[DoBotherMe]

1. It only works if the Dali Lama, Gandhi, The Buddha, Carl Sagan, and Jesus

are the live authority. Dana ; )

[SteppingRazor]

2. Well, you have to understand that Hobbes wrote Leviathan during the English Civil War.

A strong central government, then, was seen as a bulwark against the depredations of civil war. As far as surrendering liberties, it's the Hobbesian concession to social contract theory. People give up some freedom for security whenever they form a government. Complete freedom would be anarchy, and such anarchy would mean that any one person could be preyed upon by any other. In other words, life would be, to quote Hobbes, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

[graywarrior]

10. He must have been a real joy to have around.

[GumboYaYa]

3. reading Hobbes will make you feel like a Freeper.

Hobbes like Aquinas, Locke and others was a natural law theorist. Unlike all the others in that branch of philosophy, Hobbes believed that humans are not social creatures, our natural state of order is a series of violent confrontations driven by individual needs and desires, society and the state are creations of humans to basically keep us from ripping each other to shreds on a daily basis.

[SteppingRazor]

5. That, or it gives you a healthy fear of Freepers.

Hobbes may have had a point. Without any state or laws, what's to stop people from simply preying upon each other? Even if such people would be a minority, there would be enough of them that a human population without government would swiftly devolve into might makes right.

[Captain Hilts]

8. And Adam Smith's "Theory of Moral Sentiments" was a kinder, more moral response to the ugly world

Hobbes was promising.

Then, crazy anti-government types got a hold of Smith's next book, without reading "Theory..." and all hell broke loose.

[graywarrior]

11. Seriously. I am reading lots of Hobbes info online and he just creeps me out.

I do feel as though I am at the site whose-name-we-do-not-speak.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. Like Locke He Had A Rather Limited View Of Government

~

[sinkingfeeling]

6. Maybe this will help.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/hobmoral/

Look at the latest from the Tea Party and you will understand his “natural condition of mankind,” a state of violence, insecurity and constant threat.

[jwirr]

7. Or look at Somalia and it's pirates.

[graywarrior]

12. He looks like David Crosby except that he looks as if he rips off rat's heads with his teeth

[MrScorpio]

9. Basically, people suck nt

[graywarrior]

13. I love and treasure individuals as I meet them;. . .

. . .I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to.

~George Carlin

[Odin2005]

14. Hobbes' stuff is a bunch of Authoritarian garbage contradicted by modern sociology and anthropology.

You are right, you CAN'T tie them together and whoever assigned that is an idiot. Hobbes is the archetypal reactionary who believes Humanity is naturally evil and must be controlled by force

Humans naturally form egalitarian, participatory communities in the absence of outside coercion and oppression, and thus Hobbes' entire premise is false.

[SteppingRazor]

18. "Humans naturally form egalitarian, participatory communities" Really?

Because that hasn't always been the case, and even when it has been, that hasn't stopped such communities from killing the bejesus out of other communities.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. Hobbes isn't so much about those positive rights

Hobbes isn't really who'd you'd go to for the right to a decent education, or a job. You might, stretching things a lot, extend the protection of the state, which, for Hobbes, meant protection from violence or coercion, to protection from illness too, but I don't think Hobbes ever considered any form of medical practice as a suitable part of the state. But Hobbes is really more about "why have a United States of America" (or wherever one lives) at all.

(Ignore my momentary remarks about cars - I realised, just as I hit the submit button, that was just a typo for 'care').

[graywarrior]

16. Seems like that's where the republican party is headed

[sfwriter]

17. He was a stuffed tiger, right? EOM