On Tue, 21 Mar 2000 11:06:41 -0800 Sam Pawlett <rsp at uniserve.com> writes:
>
>
> Ken Hanly wrote:
> >
> > If people must act on self-interested reasons--and this seems to
> follow from
> > his hard determinism plus his psychological egoism- then there is
> no obligation
> > to obey the sovereign and no such thing as justice except as what
> is in a
> > person's interest.
>
> Hobbes thinks that every person -more or less- is rational and a
> rational person would submit to the laws of the sovereign, if only
> to
> get out of the state of nature which is less attractive than society
> with a sovereign. As contemporary Hobbesian David Gauthier puts it :
>
> "Since the unlimited right of nature gives rise to war, renouncing
> some
> part of this right is necessary for peace.The renunciation must of
> course be mutual; each person expects to benefit, not from his own
> act
> of renunciation, but from that of his fellows, and so no one has
> reason
> to renounce his rights unilaterally. What Hobbes envisions is a
> rational
> bargain in which each accepts certain constraints on his freedom of
> actionso that all may avoid the costs of the natural condition of
> war."
> *Morals By Agreement p158-9.*
>
>
> 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.
>
> , or that disobeying the
> > sovereign will cause a return to the state of nature.
>
> Disobeying the sovereign will land you jail because it is disobeying
> a
> contract you have signed. If enough people disobey at any one time,
> a
> state of nature is possible.
>
> Hobbes of course says
> > nothing about prisoner's dilemmas and the contract is not a
> classic pd anyway.
>
> That's arguable.
>
> > Some people defect all the bloody time and make a mint or even a
> literal
> > killing without being punished and the social order still
> survives.
>
> Hobbes point is that it is rational for everyone to defect in which
> case
> competition between individuals for scarce goods leads to a state of
> nature.
>
> So Hobbes
> > refuses to be a free rider. This is a wimpy response for a
> supposedly robust
> > egoist. Lets face it Hobbes is, as I said earlier, scared shitless
> of power.
>
> Hobbes is scared shitless but of social disorder.
>
>
>
> JKSCHW at aol.com wrote:
> >
> Otherwise you can't figure out why H wrote about 2/3 of Leviathan,
> unless you think he was just putting in that stuff on the Kingdom of
> Darknesse to confuse the faithful.
>
> I was always told, by David Gauthier among others, that Hobbes
> feared
> being persecuted by the church for being an atheist, so tried to
> show he
> believed in God in the last 2/3. Sort of like Hume refusing to
> publish
> his dialogues on religion while he was still alive.
>
> > To be perfectly fair I used to teach Hobbes as a proto decision
> theorist,w hen I was a prof, because it's easier that way and it
> gets across some useful rational choice equipment, but I think Don
> is right and he was not.
>
> The rat choice reading is not the only one but it is defensible and
> a
> lot of interesting philosophers, like Kavka and Gauthier, who've
> spent
> much time thinking about Hobbes read him that way.
>
> > Hobbes' motto is: better the Stalinist terror than the Liberian
> civil war. And is he wrong, if those are the choices.
> >
> Yep.
>
> Sam Pawlett
________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.