Baruch and Hobbesy, freedom of speech, etc.

[JKSCHW at aol.com]

Sam and I, and our respective authorities, disagree about whether we should ignore everything in Hobbes a modern decision theorist would find uninteresting, such as Hobbes' discussion of religion, the passions, sociology, methodology, etc. Gauthier & Kavka are smart people, but of course, being utterly ignorant of and not interested in history, religion, politics, and human nature hardly fits one to determine whether Hobbes should be likewise convicted of narrow myopism and attributed a prescient interest in a mathemetical framework that mysteriously failed to arise for another 300 years. Their own work in a "Hobbesean" spirit is interesting, but is it Hobbes? Hampton's a different story and is a lot more nuanced and a lot less nbarrowly decision theoretic also. 

I got the decision theoretic Hobbes from Tim Scanlon, Peter Railtoin, and Allen Gibbard, who know no history, and the 17th century Hobbes from Quentin Skinner, Steve Shapin, John Dunn, and Don Herzog--the latter of whom, at least, knows both decision theory and history. I'll stick with him. But the decision theoretiv Hobbes isa  lot easirt to teach.

Couple more comments:


>It is also just not empirically true that people are

 > equal in power in  a state of nature as Hobbes holds

 I think what Hobbes has in mind is that everyone is equal in power

 before the laws of the market.

Clearly not. There are no markets in Hobbes state of Warre because there is no property and no contract. The equality of which Hobbes speaks is, as he plainly says, the roughly equal ability of the dumbest and weakest to kill the (unaided) smartest and strongest. That's why he says girls are equal to boys, btw.

 >  Hobbes of course says

 > nothing about prisoner's dilemmas and the contract is not a classic pd

 anyway.

 >That's arguable.

No, it is not. the classic 2 person PD involves two self interested persons (only) who will never again interact, who are seperated and unable to communicate on strategy, and whose options are ranked in a certain way that generates the puzzle. Hobbes has the selfish motivations and the ranking, but that is all. the rest of the structure is lacking.

--jks